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SINAI, 



KADESH 



AND 



MOUNT HOE. 



SINAI, 

KADESH, AND MOUNT HOR; 



% Critical fttptrg Mo t\n ^goxxU oi t\t foto, 



WITH A MAP. 



HENRY CROSSLEY, Esq. 



(printed for private circulation.) 



■^awq 





n 

LONUON : 

MITCHELL AND SON, POINTERS, WARDOUR STREET, W. 

1860. 



The following Essay appeared in The Journal of Sacred 
TMerature for the present month. A few copies have been 
taken off from the types of the Journal (with the consent 
of the Editor) for private circulation. 

If the arguments of the Essay shall appear satisfactory, 
it is hoped, from the religious zeal which prevails in this 
country, that the question will be set finally at rest, by a 
complete and accurate investigation of that part of the 
Arabia Petrsea which yet remains to be explored. 

Perhaps no part of the globe offers so rich a field for 
Biblical discoveries, or is replete with so many interesting 
associations of great events in sacred history. But for any 
useful researches in this region, it is absolutely indispen- 
sable that the traveller should possess a knowledge both 
of the vulgar and classical Arabic, and a thorough acquaint- 
ance with the genius and ideas of the modern Arabs, and 
with their peculiar suspicions, and their tendency to invent 
such information as they imagine will be agreeable to the 
parties who journey under their care. A knowledge of 
all that the Greek and Latin writers have transmitted to 
us, respecting the history and geography of this country 



IV 



under the Nabathseans and Romans, will also be found of 
great utility. The person who travels without these pre- 
liminary studies, is much more likely to confuse the sub- 
ject than to illustrate it. 

Henry Crossley. 



Lympstone, South Devon, 
April 3rd, 1860, 



SINAI, KADESH, AND MOUNT HOR; 



A CRITICAL ENQUIRY INTO THE ROUTE OF THE 

EXODUS. 



Introduction. 



v E%w KaXd re (fcpdaat, roXfia re fiot 
Tuv0e?a ^Xwaaav opvvei \e<yeiv.- — Pind., Olymp. xiii. 

No two things can be more opposed than the popular view of the 
history and geography of the Exodus, and that which we might 
be induced to take on a careful and critical investigation of the 
subject. According to vulgar ideas, the Israelites were for forty 
years buried (as it were) from the view of the surrounding 
nations, in the depths of an uninhabited and inaccessible desert ; 
from which they emerged, at the termination of their prolonged 
wandering, to astonish nations which before had scarcely heard 
of their existence. The very reverse of this appears to us to be 
the truth. The Sinaitic peninsula, and the whole country 
spreading northwards from thence, to the Mediterranean and the 
Canaanite border, (all of which we propose to designate by the 
general title of the Negeb, or dry country,) was, as we hope to 
shew, divided at the era of the Exodus between two great na- 
tions, — Edom and Amalek, — populous, wealthy, commercial, and 
warlike ; and which supplied, by means of the exchange of their 
merchandize, the deficiencies of the barren and inhospitable 



2 A Critical Enquiry into the 

region which they inhabited. An active traffic with India by 
sea was carried on from Tur and Di-zahab, the two chief ports 
of Amalek ; and land caravans from Sheba (the modern Yemen), 
from the Cushite nations on the Persian Gulf, and from Nineveh, 
were constantly crossing the routes of the Negeb in every direc- 
tion. If the world had been searched for a peculiarly conspicu- 
ous position, in which to place the wandering nation for the 
long quarantine of their pilgrimage, it would have been impos- 
sible to have fixed on one better adapted for that purpose than 
the kingdom of Amalek, in which they remained about thirty- 
eight years. 

The evidence in support of these opinions we propose to lay 
before the public, in a series of Essays. At present, by way of 
introduction to these historical investigations, we shall examine 
the geography of the Exodus, in the hope of throwing new light 
upon a subject which modern discoveries have hitherto rather 
darkened than illustrated. 

There is not the slightest reason to suppose that any im- 
portant change has taken place in the topography of the Negeb, 
since the days of Moses. The mountains, the valleys, the plains, 
the deserts, still remain the same as at the Exodial period. No 
great convulsion of nature has disturbed the permanent features 
of the scenery. Cities may have decayed, cultivation decreased, 
groves vanished, wells and springs been filled and dried up ; but 
the general outline of the landscape still remains the same as 
when the three millions of Israel encamped at the foot of Mount 
Sinai. We should naturally expect, under such circumstances, 
that all the leading stations of the Exodus — Mount Sinai, Kadesh, 
and Mount Hor (all of them capable of being identified by so 
many criteria, casually mentioned in the history of Moses), 
should be easily discovered in the existing landscape. The 
actual topography of the peninsula ought to be the mirror and 
reflex of the Mosaic narrative. All that is wanting to render this 
history intelligible, ought to be supplied by the living features of 
the place. All these hopes, however, have hitherto been frus- 
trated. The Exodus remains to the present day a riddle un- 
solved, for every effort to identify the route of the Hebrews has 
hitherto proved a failure. What a triumph for infidelity does 
this circumstance afford ! How may the sceptic exult in evi- 
dence (apparently so decisive) that the truth of the Mosaic his- 
tory is confuted by the indelible features of nature ! We may 
imagine him raising his Paeans on this subject, and launching his 
sarcasms in something like the following terms : — 

" You require us to believe a history abounding in miracles, 
all contrary to the ordinary course of nature. At least, you 



Route of the Exodus. 3 

ought to shew us that the books in which these miracles are 
recorded have all the characteristics of a contemporary narra- 
tive. We must be convinced that Moses really wrote them, and 
really read them in the hearing of all the children of Israel. 
The whole tenor, however, of the four last books of the Pen- 
tateuch shews this supposition to be false. Compare the story 
with the scenes in which it is laid, and the one immediately con- 
futes the other. After examining the whole peninsula, you have 
never been able yet to shew even one plausible representative of 
any of the great scenes of the miracles of Moses. Where is 
your Rephidim ? where water was brought out of the living rock; 
and where half a million of the Israelites and Amalekites were 
engaged in deadly combat. The monks of St. Catherine point 
it out in the Wady el-Leja, and Canon Stanley in the Wady 
Feiran, in both of which the supply of water is copious ; and in 
both of which the space is so scanty that half a million of mice 
and frogs could scarcely have found room there for a Batracho- 
myomachia. Rephidim was at the foot of Mount Horeb ; and 
Sinai also was closely connected with Horeb, and is itself some- 
times called Horeb. Where is the Horeb which connects your 
Sinai with your Rephidim ? As for the Sinai of the monks of 
St. Catherine, Lord Lindsay has shewn that it is impossible that 
could have been the true one. Canon Stanley removes the site 
to the front of the monkish Horeb, at the Ras Safsafah. We 
willingly accept either the one or the other, for both are so 
admirably adapted for the purposes of imposture, that, if either 
of these were Mount Sinai, we know perfectly well what to think 
of Moses. 

" The next great stations are Kadesh and Mount Hor. The 
Jewish rabbins placed Kadesh at Petra, twenty centuries ago; 
and fixed the site of Mount Hor (the burial place of Aaron) at a 
mountain near Petra, now called the Jebel Haroun by the igno- 
rant Bedouins. Canon Stanley agrees with the rabbins, and 
adopts both these sites. We applaud him most earnestly, and 
are delighted to accept, at his hand, both these identifications. 
Both Petra and the Jebel Haroun are in the very heart of Edom ; 
and Moses assures us that the Israelites never entered Edom 
(even for a foot's pace), nor could by any possibility have entered 
it. The slight impediments were a powerful army of Edomites, 
and the thunders of Jehovah — the former placed in impregnable 
positions, and the latter ready to be launched against them, if 
they had violated the Divine prohibition, to infringe in any way 
on the territories assigned by Jehovah to the children of Esau. 
Your admirable identifications, therefore, disprove the very foun- 
dation of the Mosaic narrative; and you have satisfactorily 

b2 



4 A Critical Enquiry into the 

shewn that it is impossible to reconcile the history of Moses with 
the enduring features of the scenery among which the events of 
the Exodus are laid. What is the inference ? Simply that it is 
perfectly impossible that the Pentateuch could have been written 
by a contemporary pen. We see clearly that it is a work con- 
cocted at Babylon, during the captivity, by persons who knew 
nothing whatever of the geography of the Petraea, and whose 
ignorance is apparent in every page of their compilation. All 
the miracles, therefore, are defective in evidence, or rather they 
are the palpable inventions of a later age. You insult our judg- 
ment when you ask us to believe in the miracles of Moses, and 
produce in support of them this Babylonian record." 

Such might be the objections of scepticism, and they are cer- 
tainly not to be despised, at a time when the complaints of the 
clergy, and the testimony of the periodical literature of the day, 
attest a growing indifference on the part of the people to the 
religion of their forefathers, and this not merely in the pale of 
the Church, but also in the great sectarian bodies. 

We are inclined to think that some part of this evil may be 
attributed to the comparative rarity, on the part of English theo- 
logians, of a critical and profound study of the books of the Old 
Testament. This has always been the battle-field of scepticism, 
which naturally chooses its own point of attack, and prefers the 
Old Testament for this purpose to the New. Now amongst the 
clergy the New Testament is naturally the favourite study ; they 
are the expounders of the Christian religion, and it is not sur- 
prising that they should feel the greatest interest in that part of 
the Scriptures which contains the principles and doctrines of 
the religion of Christ. Not, of course, that they neglect the Old 
Testament ; this is very far from being the case ; but as a sub- 
ject for profound and serious study (we apprehend) they prefer 
the evangelical history and the teaching of the apostles. The 
inconveniences of this, in other respects so laudable an arrange- 
ment, is that we desiderate in our literature such a thorough 
and complete removal of the difficulties of the Old Testament 
(the result of extensive and accurate Oriental learning, matured 
by long study, and applied and wielded by acute criticism, fer- 
vent zeal, and indefatigable patience), as would satisfy the doubts 
of the incipient sceptic, and arrest his progress in the first steps 
towards error ; and would at the same time oppose an impreg- 
nable barrier to the attacks of infidelity when it becomes the 
assailant. 

Those who can read the signs of the times with a learned 
spirit, may see reason to apprehend that the results will even- 
tually be serious, if all the chosen objects of sceptical attack be 



Route of the Exodus. 5 

tacitly surrendered to them by our divines, in consequence of 
their pre-occupation in other studies, however excellent, how- 
ever indispensable. In the hope of contributing, in some small 
degree, to check the imaginary triumphs of scepticism in the 
Old Testament, we propose to examine critically the geography 
of the Exodus ; and adventure, as we best may, to remove the 
difficulties which have so long perplexed this entangled subject. 
To turn the arms of infidelity against itself; to reconcile all 
that has hitherto been deemed antagonistic between history and 
localities ; to shew that the accordance of the narrative with the 
scenery is such as could only have occurred on the supposition 
that the writer of the four last books of the Pentateuch was con- 
temporary with the events he records ; to prove that the actual 
topography is a better illustration of the geography of Moses 
than the scholia of a hundred commentators ;— -this may be a task 
far above our powers, but it is one which it is honourable to 
engage in, and in which even failure, after so many previous 
shipwrecks, may be readily excused. We hope, therefore, to 
carry with us the sympathy of our readers ; and not the less so, 
because the introduction of a new and improved geographical 
system for the Exodus will be intimately connected with the 
exposure of two great frauds ; one of which perverted the faith 
of the great mass of the Jewish nation in the time of our Savi- 
our, and the other has thrown a lasting stigma on the very 
name of Christianity in the tents of the enemies of revealed 
religion. 

The impostures to which we allude, are the great causes 
of the obscurity which at present prevails in the Exodial geo- 
graphy. The leading stations of the Exodus are Mount Sinai, 
Kadesh, and Mount Hor. By a fraud of the Greek monks of 
St. Catherine, Mount Sinai has been identified with a locality in 
every respect unsuitable, and irreconcilable with the events 
which occurred there. A similar imposture of the Jewish rab- 
bins had long before transferred Kadesh and Mount Hor to 
situations which (as we have before hinted) the Israelites never 
approached at any period of the Exodus. It is necessary to 
throw a rapid glance over these two impostures before we pro- 
ceed in our geographical enquiries. 



Chap. 1. — The Rabbinical imposture respecting Kadesh and 

Mount Hor. 

The origin of the sects which existed among the Jews, after 
the return from the captivity, has been (as is well known) a 



6 A Critical Enquiry into the 

point much controverted ; and which many very learned men 
have laboured to elucidate, without being able to secure the 
general adoption of their opinions. In the existing uncertainty 
we may venture to propose our own solution of this much 
agitated question, as our principal subject renders it necessary 
that we should treat, somewhat at length, of the Jewish tradi- 
tionists, so far at least as to shew, that they were a class habi- 
tuated to imposture, perfectly unscrupulous in their frauds, 
who professed an extreme veneration for the tombs of the pro- 
phets ; and who placed the sites of those tombs, without regard 
to historical truth, wherever it suited their peculiar objects, and 
usually selected those sites best adapted for commercial fairs, 
which became the almost invariable accompaniment of the annual 
pilgrimages to these tombs. 

When the edict of Cyrus gave to the Jews the privilege of 
returning to their native country and rebuilding the temple, of 
the whole Jewish nation only a small portion chose to return to 
Judaea. Out of the entire people, 42,360 only accompanied 
Zerubbabel ; out of the twenty-four courses of the priests, only 
four. The rest preferred the wealthy and luxurious province 
of Babylonia to the attempt to restore the ancient splendour of 
Judaea, amidst the difficulties and obstacles which they expected 
to encounter. Among these Babylonian Jews the great impos- 
ture of the traditions originated. It seems probable that the 
Jewish priests in Babylon, anxious to maintain their importance 
among the people, were the first inventors of the traditions. 
They assured the people that, at the time when the written law 
was communicated to Moses, it was accompanied by an oral 
commentary (infinitely more valuable than the written law 
itself), which, being too sublime and pure to be committed to 
writing, had been received traditionally by one generation from 
another, and of which they themselves were, at that period, the 
sole depositories. The effect of the traditions was (as we learn 
from the divine authority of our Saviour) to render the law of 
Moses of no effect. It may be easily supposed, therefore, that 
the men who invented these traditions (knowing them to be 
false) were pure atheists, as were, in fact, the greatest part of the 
learned men in Babylon. Throughout the East (as in Egypt, 
where the people were sunk in the grossest idolatry) the priests 
of Polytheism were almost invariably atheists. 

The doctors of the traditions invented a new religious disci- 
pline, in which the synagogue, or Beyth-knushtha, was substi- 
tuted for the temple, and the rabbi for the priest. The people 
greedily embraced the new religion, for it was really such ; they 
were delighted with the wonderful legends of the traditions; and 



Route of the Exodus. 7 

the whole youth of the nation in Chaldsea was delivered up to 
the rabbins for instruction in this novel learning. 

One great branch of the new superstition inculcated by the 
rabbins was a reverence for the tombs of the prophets of the 
nation, and of such of their doctors as were esteemed for their 
sanctity and learning. This new phase of superstition secured 
to the rabbins themselves the most important advantages. A 
yearly festival was held at the tombs of the greater prophets, 
continuing for a week or ten days, at which the congregation of 
people was immense, and to which merchants collected from all 
parts, so as to convert these great festivals into annual fairs. 
The tradition is t doctors cared very little whether the site which 
they selected, as containing the bones of any prophet or learned 
man, was genuine or not. They chose almost invariably the 
situation most convenient for commercial purposes; and thus 
transferred the tomb of Ezekiel from the banks of the Chabour 
(or Kebar) to a site at a convenient distance from Babylon, on 
the west of the Euphrates. At these great meetings, the doctors 
of the traditions were the admired of all admirers, and probably 
received large presents from the richer votaries. They had, 
therefore, no small interest in preserving this superstition. 

When the imposture of the traditions was firmly rooted in 
Chaldsea, the most influential of the rabbins deemed it advisable 
to spread the new faith in Judaea. Here they had to encounter 
a violent opposition. The priests and Levites (of whose morals 
at that period we have a repulsive picture in the prophecy of 
Malachi), saw in the new doctrine an encroachment most adverse 
to their own interests. If the traditional law were introduced 
into Judaea the synagogue would become the rival of the temple, 
and the rabbi of the priest. The new religion might eventually 
subvert the old, as it actually did in the result ; for of the Jews 
of the present day a very small portion adhere to the pure re- 
ligion of Moses. The priests and Levites opposed, therefore, 
with the utmost vigour, the stealthy progress of the doctors of 
the traditions in the land of Judaea. They appear to have be- 
stowed upon the new sect the name of Chasdim (nnto), or Chal- 
daeans, as a term indicating their foreign and barbarous origin. 
This the traditionists exchanged to Chasidim (n>Tpn) or Pious ; 
for the figure Paronomasia (or play upon words) was, at all times, 
a favourite mode of speech among the Orientals, and is used 
frequently by the Jewish prophets as being agreeable to the 
people, and possessed of a certain degree of utility in impressing 
any sentence with peculiar force. In religious disputes it was a 
weapon in much use and in high esteem. 

The traditionists, on their part, were not slow in retorting 



8 A Critical Enquiry into the 

abuse. With the usual confidence of imposture they applied to 

the orthodox Jews the name of Sedikih ( v 1 Q », CO) schismatics or 

heretics, which they (adopting the tactics of their adversaries), 
converted into Tzaddikin (n^W) Just, or Righteous. The Hebrew 

pro is, in the Syro-Chaldaic, - ^ **\ y or (in the emphatic state), 

(i2-i?l ; and from this last word is formed (Loo>j or t-^ojl, a 
Sadducee, %a%hovicaios. The Sadducees were really the ortho- 
dox sect of the Jews, though the followers of a triumphant im- 
posture contrived to brand them with the name of schismatics. 
When the Persian monarchy was destroyed by Alexander, the 
orthodox Jews exchanged the old name of Chaldseans, which 
they had previously applied to the traditionists, for that of Per- 

. m. n\ p p 

sians, or [_»_£0^) ; for the old hatred to the Chaldseans was nearly 
obsolete, and they could now safely use the name of Persians as 
a term of reproach. Thus, at a later period, they applied the 
name of Idumseans (as that of the people in the world whom 
they hated most) to the Romans, and under this fictitious name 
safely lavished upon their domineering masters all the venom of 
their abuse. Again, at a later period, when Christianity became 
the religion of the Roman empire, they applied the title of Idu- 
mseans to the Christians. 

The opprobrious name of Persians gained a new title for the 
sect of the Chasidim, who (still playing upon the malice of their 
enemies), converted this term of contempt • into the title of 

!-».-»;£> (Pharisees), or persons who, from superior religious 

purity, have abstracted, or separated themselves from the pro- 
fane vulgar. Such seems to have been the true origin of the 
Jewish sects, whose genealogy appears to be fairly indicated in 
the table on the next page. 

In some modern writers we observe the Chasidim and Phari- 
sees spoken of as the orthodox sects of the Jews, and the Sad- 
ducees as sectaries. Nothing can be further from the truth. 
The Pharisees did (it is true), teach the doctrine of the immor- 
tality of the soul, which the Sadducees denied; but the Phari- 
saic doctrine of a future life was not such as a Christian could 
admit ; and, with respect to the Sadducees, as Moses had never 
directly inculcated the doctrine of a future state, they could not 
justly be branded with the opprobrious name of sectaries, for 
not believing in that which the law had not directly inculcated. 
As to the Pharisees, it is impossible to hold that a sect which 
our Saviour rarely mentions, except as hypocrites and a genera- 
tion of vipers, and whose doctrines he declares subversive of the 



Route of the Exodus. 



9 



law, could justly claim the title of orthodox. The truth is, a 
believer in the traditional law has no more claim to be deemed 
a follower of Moses, than a Mohammedan could pretend to 
the title of a Christian. The modern Talmudic Jews appear to 
have no more connexion with Moses, than a Mohammedan with 
Christ. 





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Absurd as the doctrines of the Chasidim were, they found at 
once a ready acceptance with the Jewish people. The outward 
devotion of the Pharisees attracted the mob ; their wild and ex- 



10 A Critical Enquiry into the 

travagant legends suited the Oriental taste ; and they, by degrees, 
acquired such influence, that the very priests, who hated them, 
were eventually compelled to come over to their party. 

When the traditionists had acquired a secure footing in 
Judsea, they began to look out for the tombs of the prophets, 
that this, their favourite engine of imposture, might not be 
wanting in Judsea. The two greatest names of the race of 
Israel were Moses and his brother, the first high priest. The 
tomb of Moses was declared by the Scriptures themselves to be 
unknown to any man; that of Aaron, on the other hand, was 
well known to be on the summit of Mount Hor. 

But while the Jews were in exile in Chaldsea, during the 
seventy years' captivity, great changes had taken place in the 
countries formerly belonging to Edom and Amalek. While 
Judaea had been left waste and its cities were empty, the Edom- 
ites had entered upon the vacant territory, and occupied nearly 
the whole southern half of Judsea, extending their encroach- 
ments as far north as the city of Hebron, in the south highlands, 
and that of Beyth-gabra (afterwards Eleutheropolis), in the 
Shephelah, or lowlands. It is possible that this emigration was 
compulsory, for at the same time the Nabathsean Arabs (the 
Ishmaelites of the race of Nebaioth), seized on the greater part 
of ancient Edom and nearly the whole of ancient Amalek, and 
founded a powerful kingdom, of which Petra (the ancient Botz- 
rah, also called Sela'), became the capital. 

Notwithstanding some modern opinions to the contrary, the 
ancient kingdom of Edom consisted not only of the long range 
of mountains to the east of the Wady 'Arabah (which we shall 
term the Eastern Mount Se'yr), but also of that mountainous 
range of limestone formation which lies on the north-west of 
the Arabah, and extends southward to the Jebel Araif-en-Nakah. 
This western range we shall term the Western Mount Se'yr. 
After the Nabathsean conquests or encroachments, the Edomites 
retained only the western Mount Se'yr; and even of this they 
afterwards appear to have lost some portion. These changes 
had thrown some obscurity over the geography of Edom and 
Amalek, when the Jews returned from Babylonia. 

The true site of Kadesh (as we shall clearly prove in the 
sequel), was at a place now called El-Khalesah (the "EXovcra of 
the Macedonians and Elusa of the Romans), which lies about 
fifteen miles to the south of the ancient Canaanite border. 
Mount Hor may be safely identified with Jebel 'Araif-en-Nakah, 
a lofty conical mountain at the south-west corner of the kingdom 
of Edom, and between sixty and seventy miles to the south of 
El-Khalesah. Unfortunately, therefore, for the designs of the 



Route of the Exodus. 11 

rabbins, the true Mount Hor was in the territory still possessed 
by the children of Esau, and Kadesh was in that which they 
had recently acquired. 

Of all the people in the universe the race most detested by 
the Jews were the Idumseans. They were declared by the pro- 
phets to be a nation against whom the Lord had a perpetual in- 
dignation, — the people of his curse. That part of their territory 
which was within the ancient limits of Judsea, was called <c the 
wicked border." A pilgrimage to the true Mount Hor would 
have been to a genuine Jew at once hateful and perilous. This 
difficulty would have caused ordinary men to hesitate ; to the 
doctors of the traditions it appeared no obstacle whatever. 
They could easily have discovered Kadesh if they had pleased, 
and this would have guided them to Mount Hor. Kadesh, it is 
true, had changed its name (since it belonged to the Idumseans) 
to Alusa, but the desert around it was still called the desert of 
Kadesh, and retained this name till the days of Constantine. 
But they had no wish to discover Mount Hor in Idumsea, and 
therefore, by one of those bold impostures which any one ac- 
quainted with the Talmud will know to have been as familiar to 
them as the air which they breathed, they decided that Petra, 
then the capital of the Nabathseans, should and ought to be 
Kadesh ; and that a mountain in the immediate neighbourhood 
of that city was the true Mount Hor ! 

It is true that Petra and the pretended Mount Hor were in 
the centre of the eastern Mount Se'yr, which was the chief por- 
tion of ancient Edom. It is equally true (as has before been 
observed), that the Israelites were forbidden by Jehovah to set a 
single footstep in Edomite soil; and the king of Edom with a 
large army watched their march, to prevent such aggression ; so 
that without a miracle, worked by the power of evil, in direct 
opposition to the will of Jehovah, it was impossible that Petra 
should be Kadesh, or the pretended Mount Hor the real one. 
These, however, were points very little known to the Jews of the 
Macedonian era; they saw Petra in possession of the Naba- 
thaeans, and had not sufficient learning even to suspect that it had 
ever been otherwise. There was, therefore, little danger in this 
strange identification ; and it presented a most important advan- 
tage. The Nabatheeans were a friendly people; Petra, their 
capital, was the greatest depot of Oriental commerce in the 
west of the Euphrates, and, by holding their religious pilgrim- 
ages to the tomb of Aaron at the same time with the great 
annual fairs of the Nabathaeans, they might combine all the at- 
tractions of worldly commerce with the agreeable consciousness 
of the strict performance of a religious duty. 



12 A Critical Enquiry into the 

It is remarkable that the Jews of the time of our Saviour 
(discarding the ancient names of Botzrah, Sela', and Yoktheel, 
which would not have suited the rabbinical imposture), always 

called Petra, Rekem, (Dp; in the Arabic translation, ^j)- This 
does not appear to have been the Nabathsean name ; and we may 
suspect that it was a corruption of the Arabic *t>-j, a cairn or 
tomb; for the Nabathseans, like the modern Egyptians, pro- 
nounced the ^r hard, like our g in gild. The first enquiry of the 
Jewish pilgrims was apparently for the tomb, which the Naba- 
thseans called Regem ; and thus the city of Petra itself, in Jewish 
parlance, acquired this name, slightly corrupted and softened 
into Rekem. 

Josephus (himself a Pharisee), naturally adopted the Phari- 
saic tradition ; and hence he makes the Israelites to encamp at 
Petra (for he never mentions the name of KadeshJ, and informs 
us that Aaron was buried in a mountain near that city. But 
Josephus also assures us that Petra, in the time of Moses, was 
the capital of the Amalekites. From this we may judge what 
degree of confidence we ought to place in this writer. It can 
be proved to demonstration, that the whole of the eastern Mount 
Se'yr was part of Edom at the time of the Exodus, and that the 
Amalekites possessed no portion of this region. 

Eusebius, Jerome, and others of the earlier Christian writers, 
naturally borrowed their scriptural geography of the Old Testa- 
ment from the Jews, which led them, unfortunately, into numer- 
ous errors and self-contradictions. 

When Christianity expelled Paganism from the Petrsea, the 
city of Petra became the seat of a Christian bishopric ; and the 
Christians of Petra adopted, without hesitation or enquiry, the 
Pharisaic tradition as to the site of Mount Hor. Never was 
there an imposture more extravagant than this of the rabbins 
respecting Kadesh and Mount Hor; rarely has an imposture 
been more successful. The traditionists were not satisfied with 
identifying the two principal sites, they planted round them a 
host of minor sites, all equally false. The desert of Tzin was 
assumed to be the pleasant valley now called the Wady Musa ; 
the waters of Meribah-Kadesh were shewn in the spring now 
known as the 'Am Musa; and the first crusaders, in a rapid ex- 
pedition made into Idumsea, in the year 1100, watered their 
horses, with great devotion, at the sacred spring. The Beeroth 
Beney Ya'akan was pointed out at some spot about ten miles 
from Petra, and »j>, which was on the borders of Moab, was 
transferred to the immediate vicinity of Petra, and called Tai 



Route of the Exodus. 13 

by the Greeks. What is most singular is, that while Eusebius 
and Jerome adopt the rabbinical impostures, they admit (con- 
trary to the rabbins) that Petra (otherwise called Rekem), was 
in the land of Edom, or Idumasa, the country of Esau, in their 
days called Gebalene; and that the latter name (Hellenized from 

the Arabic JL>-), was only another name for Mount Se'yr. So 

gross was the fallacy of the rabbinical imposture, that these 
strange topographers actually conducted the Israelites to Kadesh 
from the east (by the Wady Musa and the Syk), and from thence 
westward to the false Mount Hor, though this was leading them 
away from Moab and the Arnon, the true direction of their 
march, by a long, unintelligible, and most needless circuit. Yet 
modern travellers and Biblical critics, who all conduct the Israel- 
ites to the false Mount Hor from the west, by the Wady Haroun 
(a day's journey through the very heart of Edom), have not per- 
ceived that the only foundation for this theory is a wild tradition, 
which conducts the three millions in the directly contrary direc- 
tion. And for such absurdities as these they are content to 
reject and trample under foot the plain words of Moses, who 
assures us that the Israelites were prevented by a hostile army, 
and the interdiction of God, from passing, by a single foot-pace, 
any part of the boundaries of Edom. 

The tradition thus readily accepted by the Christians, was 
transmitted by them to the Mohammedans. When the Arabs 
became masters of Syria, the Petrsea and Egypt, that people, 
who (as taught by their prophet) revered both Moses and Aaron 
as much as the Jews themselves, received this false tradition 
of the site of Mount Hor from the unanimous testimony of 
Jews and Christians ; and the deceived Moslemin, even to this 
day, deem it a pious act of devotion to sacrifice a sheep or a 
goat at the tomb of Aaron, a rite which they certainly learnt 
from the Jewish traditionists. 

In this manner a legend, commencing in imposture, has de- 
scended from the era of the Asmonseans to our own times ; but 
from the earliest commencement of the tradition to the time of 
Moses, there is a gap of, at least, eleven centuries ; and during 
the latter part of this period, the Jewish nation, long at war with 
Edom, then exiled at Babylon, and afterwards on the very worst 
terms with their old enemies the children of Esau, and excluded 
from Idumsea in the Negeb, had, amidst the revolution of the 
neighbouring states, the alteration of boundaries, and the change 
of local names, certainly lost all knowledge of the true Mount 
Hor of the Mosaic period. 

That the mountain now called the Jebel Haroun (or moun- 



14 A Critical Enquiry into the 

tain of Aaron), near Petra, is not the true Mount Hor, is per- 
fectly certain; because the Israelites (in every way precluded 
from entering Edom) could not have marched for a day's journey 
into the very heart of the country, encamped in or near that 
city which, from its peculiar and unrivalled advantages of situa- 
tion, has in all ages (under the various names of Botzrah, Sela', 
Yoktheel, Rekem and Petra), been the capital of the land of 
Se'yr ; and buried their high priest (the brother of their leader) 
on the summit of a mountain, the most conspicuous object from 
the rocks, which rise above the hollow basin of Petra. All this 
is false and impossible, though this is now, from a series of 
strange delusions, the universal creed of all modern writers who 
have visited, or in any way treated of Mount Hor. That the 
true Kadesh was on or near the site of El-Khalesah, and that 
the true Mount Hor is identical with the Jebel 'Araif-en-Nakah, 
shall, by irrefragable arguments, be made perfectly clear as we 
proceed. 



Chapter II. — The Imposture of the Greek Monks with 
respect to Mount Sinai. 

The tradition that the mountain at present called the Jebel 
Musa, or mountain of Moses, was the real Mount Sinai, origi- 
nated with, and has been preserved by, a body of Greek monks, 
whose monastery, that of St. Catherine, is at the foot of a rocky 
mountain, which they call Mount Horeb, and from whose sum- 
mit the pretended Mount Sinai rises up, as one mountain piled 
upon another. The earliest period to which the tradition can be 
traced is the time of the Emperor Constantine. The monastic 
life had just been introduced into the Petrsea by Hilarion, a 
pupil of St. Anthony ; and the life of Hilarion (as written by 
St. Jerome) is a curious and instructive record of the gross 
abuses introduced into Christianity at this early period. Accord- 
ing to St. Jerome, the miracles performed by Hilarion equalled 
any performed by the apostles. They were, however, notwith- 
standing the miraculous power displayed in them, not a little 
ridiculous by the circumstances attending them. On the decease 
of the saint, his tomb still performed miracles, and a godly man 
of the name of Hesychius undertook to steal his bones at the 
risk of his life. This theft seems highly approved of by St. 
Jerome, who, however, pathetically observes, that the desecrated 
tomb still continued to perform as many or even greater mira- 
cles than the actual relics of the saint, when removed from 
Cyprus to Palestine. Such was the school in which the monks 



Route of the Exodus. 15 

of the Petrsea were trained ; for monachism, in this region, cer- 
tainly owed its birth and extension to Hilarion. A body of his 
pupils settled in the narrow ravine now called the Wady Shoaib, 
at the foot of the mountains to which they afterwards gave the 
names of Horeb and Sinai. This happened at a time when the 
whole Christian world in Syria was occupied in the gainful trade 
of discovering false sites of great religious events. 

In the year 326 the Empress Helena, the mother of Con- 
stantine, landed in Palestine to visit Jerusalem. She was a very 
old, and probably a very ill-educated woman, as she was the 
daughter of an innkeeper in the petty town of Drepanum, in 
Bi,thynia, on the shores of the Propontis. She was, however, 
sincerely pious, exceedingly wealthy, and supported in all her 
religious views by her son, who, little to be praised as a husband 
or a father, seems, if we may judge from history, to have been 
a model of filial duty. When the empress entered Jerusalem, 
no one knew even the site of the crucifixion. It was not very 
likely that they should, as the very site of Jerusalem had been 
ploughed up by the orders of Hadrian. No person in Jerusalem, 
or in any part of Palestine, appears to have troubled himself 
about the sacred sites. An universal ignorance seems to have 
prevailed througli Palestine. But the visit of the empress 
changed everything. Gold was poured out lavishly to the dis- 
coverers of sacred places, and as soon as the trade in localities 
and relics became gainful, universal Palestine teemed with dis- 
coveries. The people now found that they knew by intuition 
every spot ever mentioned in Scripture ; and every child could 
now point out the place where St. Peter went out and wept bit- 
terly, in that very city where, a few months before, no one knew 
or even suspected the true site of the sepulchre of Christ ! 

It was exactly at this time, when the discovery of false sites 
was the common trade of Palestine, that the monks of the 
"Wady Shoaib, according to their own account, petitioned to the 
empress for funds to erect a chapel, in honour of the burning 
bush, which they affirmed to be near their retreat. The very 
name savours of imposture ; for, supposing that any tradition of 
the true Mount Sinai had survived to their time (which it cer- 
tainly had not), still it is very unlikely, nay, contrary to all con- 
jectural probability, that the exact position of the bush in which 
Jehovah appeared to Moses would have been preserved by local 
tradition. The petition, however, was granted, and the chapel 
was built. In the year 562 Justinian erected for them, at their 
request, a fortified convent ; and they shortly after this discovered 
(as they affirmed), by a revelation to one of the monks in a 
dream, the body of a pretended martyr (to whom they gave the 



16 A Critical Enquiry into the 

name of St. Catherine), on the summit of a neighbouring moun- 
tain, to which it had been conveyed by angels three hundred 
years before, from the city of Alexandria, where the martyrdom 
took place. This stamps the character of the monks with the 
fatal brand of imposture. Their whole subsequent conduct has 
been one continued series of similar impositions, so palpable, so 
extravagant, and in some instances so unblushingly avowed by 
themselves, that it may be questioned whether, among the genus 
monk, any species like the monks of St. Catherine ever existed to 
degrade the Christian religion by their abominable fabrications. 

It will be seen, therefore, that the tradition preserved by the 
monks of St. Catherine, wants every element which could give 
it authenticity. Its commencement was at a time when these 
impostures were the universal occupation of the Greek monks 
and clergy of Palestine and the surrounding countries ; and the 
corporate body, which has preserved the pretended tradition, has 
been disgraced by every imposture which can throw a scandal on 
the very name of religion. 

The Sinai of the monks of St. Catherine has not even the 
very dubious honour of being the sole Sinai of monkish tradi- 
tion. According to the abundant power claimed by the Romish 
Church, it not unfrequently happens that the complete relics of 
some eminent saint are possessed (if we choose to believe the in- 
fallibility of monachism), in their entire totality, by each of five 
or six different convents at the same time. So in the Negeb, 
there appear to have been, at least, two monasteries, those of 
the city of Paran and of St. Catherine, each of which claimed, 
in the early period of monachism, its own true and indisputable 
Mount Sinai. 

The Sinai of Paran (the modern Mount Serbal, which was 
really the Mount Paran of Scripture) is supposed, as being near 
the chief city in the peninsula, which was also the seat of a 
bishopric, to have been the more popular Sinai, as long as Paran 
maintained its importance. But after the conquests of the Arabs, 
the city fell into ruin ; while the fortified monastery, by the 
most infamous and incredibly base subservience to the con- 
querors, (for its monks forged a charter of security, purporting to 
be granted by Mohammed, and built a Mohammedan mosque 
within their outer walls, side by side with the church of the 
transfiguration, 

" Shouldering God's altar, a vile image stands :") 

by these vile observances the monastery of St. Catherine con- 
trived to maintain itself in the general ruin. To please the 
Moslem, they actually chiselled out a hole in the solid rock (on 



Route of the Exodus. 17 

that mountain which they pretended to consider as sacred to 
Jehovah), and shewed it to the world as the print of one of the 
feet of Mohammed's camels; and this impious fraud they un- 
blushingly avowed to the Prefetto of the Franciscans in Egypt, 
when he visited their convent in 1722. Thus it was that the 
monks of St. Catherine acquired the monopoly of forgery for the 
site of Mount Sinai; and that the Jebel Musa, for some cen- 
turies, maintained its importance. When it once became esta- 
blished in solitary dignity, it long passed current with travellers 
of all sorts, learned and illiterate. Even men at once erudite 
and sagacious, like Dr. Thomas Shaw, swallowed the imposture ; 
and regarded with unfeigned reverence the monkish sites of 
Rephidim and the rock of Meribah, both of which assume an 
impossibility, and openly set common sense at defiance. 

It was not till the present century that the world began to 
awake to the palpable imposture of the monkish Sinai. When 
doubts once began to be suggested, they rapidly accumulated : 
Lord Lindsay, by the most convincing arguments, has shewn it 
to be impossible that the monkish mountain should be the real 
Sinai. A popular modern writer, in a very interesting work, 
has suggested the substitution of the Has Safsafah (a promontory 
in front of the monkish Horeb) as the real Sinai. This removes 
one objection, but increases the force of others. But it is need- 
less to attempt any serious confutation of this opinion ; since we 
hope to shew, beyond the power of reasonable dispute, that the 
true Mount Sinai is in a very different position. 

Even since the Jebel Musa has been marked with the brand 
of suspicion, nay, since its pretensions have been triumphantly 
refuted, the wild majesty and solemn horror of the surrounding 
scenery (not to mention the convenience of comfortable quarters 
at the monastery of St. Catherine, and the curious history, and 
Byzantine architecture, of that convent) have excited the interest 
of a numerous class of visitors. One of the quaintest of these 
has bestowed upon the grotesque mountains of the Granitic 
region, the fanciful appellation of " the Alps unclothed ;" and 
with equal felicity has compared the cut de sac of the Wady 
Shoail to the "end of the world. " These strange epithets have 
been religiously echoed by succeeding travellers ; and the tourist, 
who only wanders for amusement, repeats the sentiment of 
Gray,— 

" Prsesentiorem et conspicimus Deum 
Per invias rapes, fera per juga 
Clivosque prseruptos ;" 

and indulges in the enthusiasm of the moment, without caring 



18 A Critical Enquiry into the 

much whether the ancient associations by which his momentary 
raptures are prompted be genuine or not. 

To the deist and atheist the Mount Sinai of. the monks has 
still stronger recommendations. If the whole universe were to 
be searched for the appropriate scene of a great religious im- 
posture, the probabilities appear a million to one that none could 
be found so exquisitely adapted for the purpose as the Sinai of 
the monks of St. Catherine. If (to avoid one fatal objection) 
we suppose the Has Safsafah to be the true Mount Sinai, in 
spite of evidence which appears decisive to the contrary, the 
aptitude of the site for the purposes of deception is still further 
increased. Here all the miraculous events of the great day of 
the covenant might have been so dramatically represented by a 
skilful impostor, educated in the arts of the Egyptian priest- 
hood, as to be received with undoubting acquiescence as real 
miracles by an ignorant and credulous multitude, already awed 
and confounded by the wild horrors of the surrounding scenery. 
Hence it is important to the cause of true religion, to prove 
that the Sinai of the monks, and those sites selected in its neigh- 
bourhood by modern travellers, have no pretensions whatever to 
the lofty title which is claimed for them ; and, indeed, inde- 
pendent of all the other objections (which are numerous and 
insurmountable) we may assume it as a certain rule that no 
great miracle would ever be performed on a site, or under cir- 
cumstances, which laid it open to the suspicion of imposture ; 
since, in such a case, all the great objects of a miracle would be 
destroyed. 

Since doubts have been thrown on the monkish imposture, 
all the other mountains of the Granitic district have successively 
been examined to discover the true Mount Sinai; but, in no 
case has a fit representative for the Mosaic mountain been 
pointed out. The claims of Mount Serbal have again come 
under consideration ; but independently of the certain fact that 
this mountain is the Paran, and not the Sinai of the Scriptures, 
the total want of any proper encamping ground at its base has 
been found a sufficient reason for its general rejection. It is 
easy to point out the true reason why all search has hitherto 
been disappointed ; — it has been invariably made in the Granitic 
region, which contains all the loftiest mountains of the peninsula. 
But it can be satisfactory shewn, that no very lofty mountain 
vould agree with the circumstances of the Mosaic narrative ; 
and we think we shall be able to prove that the great body of 
the Israelites never even entered that region at all. 



Route of the Exodus. 19 



Chap. III. — Mount Sinai. 

Having endeavoured, in the two preceding chapters, to shew- 
that the two traditions respecting Mount Sinai and Mount Hor 
(which have done so much to disturb the true geography of the 
Exodus) are both the impudent and irrational forgeries of inte- 
rested fraud, we shall now proceed to search for the true sites of 
the three great stations of the Exodus, —Sinai, Kadesh, and 
Mount Hor. We shall commence with Mount Sinai ; but, 
before approaching the subject, we must examine the important 
question of the actual numbers of the people of Israel, because 
this affects every stage of our enquiry. 

I. At the census taken during the encampment at Mount 
Sinai, the total number of all the males of the military tribes, 
(exclusive of the tribe of Levi,) who were of the age of twenty 
years and upwards, was found to be 603,550. According to this 
census, the total number of the whole nation, including the 
Levites, the women, and the children, must have been from two 
millions and a half to three millions. Some writers have con- 
sidered these numbers as incredible, and have suspected that the 
Jewish copyists have tampered with the original text of the 
Pentateuch, to increase the historical importance of their nation. 
Several reasons are alleged by Dean Milman, in his History of 
the Jews, for doubting the accuracy of the vulgar Hebrew text, 
all of which appear to us to admit of an easy and satisfactory 
reply. But it appears needless to enter upon the discussion, be- 
cause it seems to have been admitted by the person, of all others, 
least likely to be suspected of exaggeration, that the numbers of 
the Israelites were to be computed by millions, and not by thou- 
sands, as the Dean would prefer. The Pharaoh who reigned at 
the time of the birth of Moses, alarmed on observing that " the 
children of Israel increased abundantly, and waxed exceeding 
mighty, and that the land was filled by them'' called a council of 
his people, and drew their special attention to the dangerous 
increase of the Nomade people : " And he said unto his people, 
Behold, the people of the children of Israel are more and 
mightier than we." If we consider the pride of the Pharaohs 
and the conceit of the Egyptians, we may feel very certain that 
the nation which this Pharaoh declares to be more in number 
and mightier than his own people, could not have had a popula- 
tion of less than three millions. 

Ewald, in his History, appears satisfied as to the actual num- 
bers of the Hebrew text ; and Canon Stanley agrees on this point 
with the German writer. We shall assume, therefore, the num- 

c 2 



20 A Critical Enquiry into the 

bers of the whole Israelitic nation to have been about three 
millions; a point of peculiar importance in our future enquiries. 
They took with them, as Moses informs us, very much 
cattle ; and they were also accompanied by a mixed multitude 
called the Asaphsuph (^nrarr, Numb. xi. 4, called also :n y», Exod. 
xii. 38), who appear to have been the children of Hebrew women 
by Egyptian fathers, like the son of the Danite woman Shelo- 
mith, mentioned Levit. xxiv. 10. Whoever, therefore, specu- 
lates on the route of the Exodus, should always bear in mind 
the vast multitudes of which the expedition was composed, and 
the incumbrance of the women, and children, and cattle. An 
average day's journey could|rarely have exceeded ten miles, and 
the line of march must frequently have been of enormous extent. 
The encampments, which were in the form of a square when cir- 
cumstances admitted, might, when there was ample space to 
consult health and comfort, have extended forty miles in circuit, 
or ten miles on each of the four sides. 

II. The general direction of the route, after the passage of 
the Red Sea, as far as the desert of Sin, is perfectly well known. 
The encampment by the Red Sea, mentioned in Numb, xxxiii. 
10, removes all difficulty on this point. The sites of the parti- 
cular stations will perhaps always remain a subject of dispute; 
but as long as we are certain of the line of route, the minutiae 
are not of particular importance. The wilderness of Sin may be 
identified with considerable probability with a plain now called 
the plain of Murkhah. From hence all writers on the subject 
of the Exodus have conducted the wanderers into the Granitic 
region of the peninsula. 

The southern corner of the Sinaitic peninsula is a region of 
granite rocks, intersected by numerous wadys or ravines, which 
form the only means of communication from one part to another 
of this Alpine district. Considering the vast numbers of the He- 
brews, and the attendant Asaphsuph, and the incumbrance of the 
cattle, it seems impossible that they could ever have entered these 
narrow and rugged ravines. We shall seek, therefore, a new course 
for their march, and it is not difficult to find a more probable one. 
To the east of the plain of Murkhah commences a long and 
comparatively narrow desert of sand, which forms a species of 
belt almost across the whole breadth of the peninsula; it may 
be about seventy miles in length by about twelve in average 
breadth. It is almost the only desert of sand in the whole 
peninsula. It is level, and in other respects convenient for a 
march. The modern name of this desert is the Debbet er- 
Hamleh. On the north of this desert, and running parallel with 
it, is a long range of low mountains of extremely uniform out- 



Route of the Exodus. * 21 

line; which, like the Debbet er-Ramleh, crosses nearly the 
whole of the peninsula, and whose Arabic name is the Jebel 
et-Tih. In the mid-length of this range is a lofty mountain, ris- 
ing pre-eminent above the rest of the chain, which is now called 
the Jebel el-'Ojmah. On the south side of the sandy desert 
are the northern mountains of the Granitic region. Suppose then 
that we assume tentatively that the long and low range of the 
Jebel et-Tih was the Mount Horeb of Moses, that the lofty 
mountain in the midst of the range was Mount Sinai, — and that 
the desert of Sinai formed the eastern half of the Debbet er- 
Hamleh : — let us see how far these suppositions will agree with 
the Mosaic narrative of the Exodus. 

III. It should be observed that to the north of the Jebel et- 
Tih is a very extensive desert of limestone formation, now called 
et-Tih, which reaches as far north as the southern border of an- 
cient Canaan. There can be no doubt whatever, that the desert 
of the Tih was, in the time of Moses, called the Midbar Paran, 
or desert of Paran. In this desert, and about one or two days' 
journey to the north-west of our supposed Mount Sinai, we will 
place a colony of Kenite Midianites ; of one of whose encamp- 
ments Jethro, the father-in-law of Moses, was priest. The 
Midianites were a wide-spreading nation, usually found inter- 
mixed with the Ishmaelite tribes to the east of the three king- 
doms of Edom, Moab, and Ammon. They were for the most 
part a Nomade people, but there was one colony with which 
Moses has made us familiar, which had settled in fixed habita- 
tions to the north of the Arnon, where it possessed five cities, 
each governed by its own king, though these kings were really 
subjects of the king of Heshbon, their suzerain and lord. 

There is not the slightest authority, however, for placing any 
part of the Midianite nation to the east of the Gulf of Eylath 
at the time of the Exodus. This is one of the absurdities of the 
rabbinical geography which the Mohammedan Arabs have con- 
trived to borrow from the Arabian Jews. That Jethro's Kenites 
were encamped in the desert of Paran there can be no reason- 
able doubt. When David had conquered Edom, Hadad, a youth 
of the blood-royal of Edom, was carried by his father's servants 
to Paran in the Sinaitic peninsula. They stopped for a time at 
Midian, and then proceeded to Paran (1 Kings xi. 14 — 18). 
Now, in the position in which we have placed the Midian of 
Jethro, it would be exactly in the road from Edom to Paran. 
So when Saul made war against the Nomade Amalekites, who 
inhabited the whole breadth of the peninsula, from Shur (Suez) 
to Chawilah (a colony of the Cushite Chawilans settled near 
Eylath in the Arabian desert), he found the Kenites intermixed 



22 -A Critical Enquiry into the 

with the Amalekites, and advised them to remove, that they 
might not be included in the slaughter of the latter. The rea- 
son alleged by the king for this act of mercy was, <( For ye 
shewed kindness to ail the children of Israel when they came 
out of Egypt." This evidently relates to the Midianites of 
Jethro's clan. We seem, therefore, justified in placing the en- 
campment of Jethro to the north of our Mount Horeb ; and we 
shall see in the sequel, how well this position agrees with the 
Mosaic history. 

IV. But we must carry the scrutiny of the position we have 
fixed upon to a period long antecedent to the date of the Exodus. 
Before the time of Moses, Horeb was called the "Mount of 
God :" it had an ancient celebrity as a place of peculiar sanc- 
tity. Though Horeb is here mentioned in general terms, and 
the name of the Mount of God seems to have been given to the 
whole of the range, yet the place regarded as the chief seat of 
sanctity seems clearly to have been Mount Sinai ; and as, 
according to our system of positions, Mount Sinai was part of 
the Horeb chain, the name of Horeb might very well have been 
given to Mount Sinai. It will be observed that in the original 
text the words used for the Mount of God are rafwn tt, the 
Mount of the God. The definite article placed before the name 
of God, indicates in Hebrew that the God spoken of is Jehovah 
himself, in opposition to the idol-deities of Polytheism. The 
same idiom is observed in the Arabic. It was then Jehovah 
himself, who in times anterior to the residence of Moses in 
Midian had been worshipped upon Mount Sinai by a believing 
people. 

We purpose to shew in a separate dissertation, " On the origin 
of the Phoenicians," that it was this people (who some centuries 
before the time of Moses inhabited the Sinaitic peninsula) by 
whom Jehovah was adored upon Mount Sinai ; and that a dis- 
tinct allusion to this ancient sanctity, attached to the mountain 
in the Phoenician times, is to be found in the prophecy of Eze- 
kiel respecting Tyre (chap, xxviii. 11 — 19). Of this important 
and most interesting prophecy, we venture with diffidence to 
offer the following as an attempt towards a new and improved 
translation. 



" Prophecy against Tyre. — Part IV. 

" And the word of Jehovah came to me, saying, Son of man, raise the 
funeral lament over the king of Tyre ; and thou shalt say to him, Thus 
saith Jehovah, my Lord : 



Route of the Exodus. 23 

I. 

Thou art the seal of the exact sum, 

Full of wisdom, and perfect of beauty. 

In Eden, that delightful garden, hast thou dwelt, 

Every precious jewel adorned thy canopy, 

The sardius, the topaz, and the diamond, 

The chrysolite, the sardonyx, and the jasper, 

The sapphire, the emerald, and the carbuncle, and gold. 

The minstrelsy of thy tabrets and thy pipes 

Was prepared for thee at the day thou wert created. 

Thou wert the anointed and guardian cherub ; and [it was] I [who] placed 

thee : 
On the holy hill of God didst thou dwell ; 
In the midst of the rocks of fire didst thou walk. 
Perfect wert thou in thy ways from the day thou wert created, 
Until by reason of thy vast traffic 
Iniquity was found in thee. 

[Thy sons]' filled the midst of thee with violence, and thou sinnedst ; 
And I cast thee as profane from the mount of God ; 
And I dispersed thee, thou guardian cherub, 
From the midst of the rocks of fire. 

II. 

[And since again] thou wert lifted up on account of thy beauty ; 

[And enamoured] of thy splendour thou hast corrupted thy wisdom : 

Upon the earth have I cast thee, before kings have I placed thee ; 

That thou mayest become a gazing-stock ; 

By the multitude of thy crimes, by the iniquity of thy traffic, 

Thou hast profaned [even] thy [idolatrous] sanctuaries ; 

And I will bring forth fire from the midst of thee, which shall devour thee 

And I will reduce thee to ashes, upon the earth, 

Before the eyes of every gazer on ; 

And those who knew thee among the nations shall be stupified over thee : 

Thou shalt bean object of astonishment, and never again shall thou exist." 

It has been usually supposed that this prophecy was ad- 
dressed to some actual king of Tyre. This we believe to be 
perfectly impossible. Tyre, from its first foundation on the 
Syrian coast, was always so pre-eminently idolatrous that no 
king of this Baal-and-Astarte-worshipping city could ever have 
merited the praises here bestowed by Ezekiel upon the primitive 
orthodoxy of the object of the prophecy. Nor could there ever 
have been a period when the Syrian Tyre could have deserved 
the title of the "guardian cherub of the holy hill of God/' The 
worship of Baal was contemporary with the foundation of the 
city. The temple of this deity was as old as the city itself. 
The fervour of idolatrous bigotry and superstition never seems 



24 A Critical Enquiry into the 

to have been intermitted in any period of Tyrian history. Ithobal, 
"the man or servant of Baal/' was a favourite name of the kings ; 
and this appears to have been actually the name of the very 
king who was reigning at the time of the prophecy of Ezekiel. 
Nor would it be easy to understand to what part of any territory, 
ever possessed by the Syrian Tyre, the name of " the holy hill of 
God" could be applied. But assume that the Tyrian people is 
here typified under the figure of its king, and that the com- 
mencement of the first stanza relates to the innocent youth of 
the Phoenician nation, when they inhabited the Negeb, and when 
Mount Sinai was the great gathering-place of their religious 
assemblies, and the whole prophecy becomes clear and intelli- 
gible. 

The concurrent testimony of sacred and profane history 
proves the Phoenicians to have been a Cushite colony from 
Chawilah, on the Persian Gulf, who first settled in the Negeb, 
and were afterwards transferred, by the Assyrians, to the Medi- 
terranean coast, south of Lebanon. In the early days of their 
settlement in the Negeb, they cultivated the pure worship of 
Jehovah, which they had brought from the yet uncorrupted 
parent nation of Chawilah. Afterwards, enriched by a lucrative 
commerce, by sea, with India, and pampered with the luxuries 
of Egypt, Canaan, and Syria, which they obtained in exchange 
for the commodities of Ind, like Jeshurun, they " waxed fat and 
kicked," and began to prefer the idol-gods of Egypt to the 
eternal Creator, whom they had previously worshipped in spirit 
and in truth. Then the power of the guilty nation was broken ; 
they were cast, as profane, from the mount of God, and dispersed 
from the Negeb, a situation unrivalled in the world for a mari- 
time people. The Assyrians, then masters of Syria and Canaan, 
compelled or induced them to remove to the northern coast of 
Syria, and to transfer their traffic from the Red Sea to the 
Mediterranean. The agency of the Assyrians in this removal 
may be proved by a passage in the prophecy of Isaiah against 
Tyre (chap, xxiii. 13), which has hitherto much vexed translators 
and commentators, and not less the modern writers of Oriental 
history. In this prophecy Isaiah predicts the destruction of Tyre 
by the Chaldseans under Nebuchadnezzar. He addresses the 
merchants of Tarshish or Tartessus, in Spain, as the richest and 
most flourishing of the Tyrian colonies, inhabiting the Peru of 
the ancient world. After the maimer of the prophets, he bids 
these children of Tyre to sound the n:v, or funeral lament, over 
the parent-city. 

"Wail, ye ships of Tarshish," exclaimed the prophet, (the 
ships being here taken figuratively for the merchants), "for Tyre 



Route of the Exodus. 25 

is laid waste." Using the present tense for the future, Isaiah 
places the whole scene vividly before his readers. We see, in 
the picture conjured up by his glowing words, the Sidonians and 
all the neighbouring nations gazing in speechless astonishment 
on the ruin of the Queen of the Sea ; while the fierce Ohald<ean, 
leaning on his sword, smiles grimly at the desolation caused by 
his victory. Then, to dash down the pride of the conqueror, 
and his confidence in his idol deities, the prophet inquires, in a 
tone of superb disdain, "Who has taken this counsel against 
Tyre ?" " Jehovah of Hosts [" he replies triumphantly, " He has 
given command against the merchant city, to destroy the strong- 
holds thereof." He then turns to the Chaldseans, and pursues 
his argument, that the ruin of Tyre is really brought about by 
the hand of Jehovah. "Verily, oh land of the Chaldseans; this 
people [the Tyrian] was not [till] the Assyrian assigned it 
[Tyre] for a seat for the Tziyim; they [the Tziyim] raised up 
its watch-towers, they erected its palaces, [and he, Jehovah] has 
appointed it for ruin. Wail, ye ships of Tarshish, for your 
strength is destroyed." 

The word Tziyim, used generally, may be applied to the in- 
habitants of any dry region ; but used in a definite sense, as is 
clearly the case here, it applies to the inhabitants of the Negeb, 
the Tziyah tear e^o^qv, as being that "dry region" which, 
lying immediately to the south of Judah, was most familiar to 
the Yehudim, or Judasans. The inhabitants of the Tziyah, or 
Negeb, immediately before the foundation of Tyre, were cer- 
tainly the Phoenicians; and the Phoenicians, with equal cer- 
tainty, were a Cushite, and not, as is vulgarly supposed, a 
Canaanite people. Hence the writer of the eighty-seventh 
Psalm speaks of the Tyrians as Cushites, ttfo-D» -na (Tyre, the 
people of Cush), for the Masoretic punctuation, 'fimy? lis (Tyre 
with Cush), seems to admit of no rational application. 

We trust we have presented, in the preceding observations, a 
sufficiently clear account of the manner in which Mount Sinai 
acquired its ancient reputation for sanctity ; and, in so doing, 
we hope we have in some degree furthered an object which every 
one must deem of primary importance, — the interpretation of 
the prophecies ; and that with respect to two which have hither- 
to been deemed of peculiar obscurity. We have now to apply 
our elucidations of the ancient sanctity of Mount Sinai to the 
particular site of the Jebel el-'Ojmah, which we propose to shew 
was exactly the mountain which the Phoenicians would have 
chosen for their religious meetings, and whose very name is an 
evident corruption of an Arabic word which indicates these as- 
semblies. 



26 A Critical Enquiry into the 

The title of the Holy Mount of God, applied to Mount Sinai, 
appears to indicate some revelation from the Deity to his wor- 
shippers to have occurred on this mountain, such as was made 
occasionally to the earlier patriarchs. Mention is made by Eze- 
kiel of the rocks of fire; and it was in fire that the Deity 
usually revealed himself upon this mountain. Without assum- 
ing any complete system of religious ceremonies to have existed, 
such as is prescribed by the Mosaic law, we may take it for 
granted that there was at least some general outline of religious 
worship directed and observed. The chief element of this would 
necessarily be the meeting or assemblage of the whole nation, at 
one point, on the three great festivals of the year, — spring, the 
harvest, and the vintage. By the Mosaic law all the males of 
the nation were to meet three times every year at the place 
where Jehovah should "set his name." Here they brought 
their sacrifices, which they were not permitted to offer in any 
other place. " When ye go over Jordan, and dwell in the land 
which Jehovah your God giveth you to inherit, then there shall 
be a place which Jehovah shall choose to cause his name to 
dwell there. Thither thou shall come, and thither ye shall bring 
your burnt offerings and your sacrifices and your vows, and your 
free-will offerings, and there ye shall eat before Jehovah your 
God, and ye shall rejoice in all that ye put your hands unto, ye 
and your sons, and your daughters, and your men-servants, and 
your maid-servants. Take heed unto thyself, that thou offer 
not thy burnt offerings in every place that thou seest, but in the 
place which Jehovah shall choose in one of thy tribes, there thou 
shall offer thy burnt offerings, and there thou shalt do all that I 
command thee" (Deut. xii. 10 — -14). "Three times a year shall 
all thy males appear before Jehovah thy God in the place which 
he shall choose; in the feast of unleavened bread, and in the 
feast of harvest, and in the feast of ingathering, which is in the 
end of the year, when thou hast gathered in thy labours out of 
the field. And they shall not appear before Jehovah empty. 
Every man shall give as he is able, according to the blessing of 
Jehovah thy God, which he hath given thee" (Deut. xvi. 16: 
Ex. xxiii. 16). 

The " solemn assemblies " of the whole people, at stated in- 
tervals, w r ere the cardinal points of the religion of this early 
period. Their object was to prevent idolatry, by confining sacri- 
fices to a certain place, to be made within view of the whole 
nation, and to promote the civilization of the people by bring- 
ing them together, in joyous union, at the three great seasons of 
the year, for a holy, pure, and rational purpose. For these 
meetings a central position would be selected, affording ample 



Route of the Ewodus. 27 

space for the whole people to encamp, with sufficient pasturage 
for their cattle. 

All these requirements are exactly met in the position of the 
Jehel el- ; Ojmah. It stands almost exactly in the centre of the 
peninsula ; it is peculiarly accessible, in every direction, from all 
parts of the Negeb ; and the vallies of the Tih mountains, and 
the plain of the Debbet er-Ramleh, afford abundant pasture- 
ground for cattle. The very name of the Jebel el-'Ojmah, 

/ O jO-O -j y y yU-O o y y 

Lo*ss*l! Ch^T* * s an ev ^ en * corruption of ^Uvl! J-cj- or 

y O j O-O J y y 

ht^s^\ J-^-, the mountain of the religious assembly. With 

reference, therefore, to the early sanctity of Mount Sinai, we 
can require no better position for it than the Jebel el-'Ojmah. 

The name of the " Mount of God " is given to Horeb, and 
the two names, Horeb and Sinai, are used in such close con- 
nexion with each other, as it would be impossible to account for, 
except on the supposition that Sinai was part of a long chain of 
mountains known by the general name of Horeb. The name 
of Horeb, in Hebrew, inn, signifies desolation, aridity, barrenness ; 
and the feature in the Tih chain, which peculiarly struck Canon 
Stanley, was the general character of blanched desolation, which 
pervaded these mountains. We may observe that, in the He- 
brew mind, the idea of a blanched or pallid aspect in scenery 
was closely connected with that of ai'idity or desolation, because 
both were the consequences of excessive heat. The name of 
Horeb, therefore, is precisely that which would have been given 
in Hebrew to the Tih mountains ; and this is another link in 
the chain of identification. 

V. We have next to consider how far our identification of 
Mount Sinai with the Jebel el-'Ojmah will agree with the cir- 
cumstances of the visit of Moses to Midian, and the first reve- 
lation to the prophet of his future mission at the foot of Mount 
Sinai. If we were to assume, with the Jewish rabbins and the 
Mohammedan doctors, that the Midian of Jethro was on the 
east of the iElanitic Gulf, the whole story would be incom- 
prehensible. The Arabs of the present day point out the pre- 
cise well, on the Arabian side of the Gulf, where (as they pre- 
tend) Moses first met the daughters of Jethro ; a tradition which 
they, no doubt, received from the Arabian Jews; for whole 
colonies of Jews were settled in Arabia at the birth of Mo- 
hammed. From the well of Shoaib (the name given by the 
Mohammedans to Jethro), either to the monkish or the true 
Mount Sinai, would, to a shepherd encumbered with his flock, 
be a journey of weeks. The route he would have to pursue 



28 A Critical Enquiry into the 

would be one of the worst in the world for a pastoral journey, 
and there would have been no small danger that the plunderers 
of the desert (the wandering tribes of the Keturah-Sheba, for 
instance), would have treated the shepherd and his flock as un- 
ceremoniously as happened in the case of the cattle of Job, — 
" Sheba fell upon them and took them away ■ yea, and they 
have slain the servants with the edge of the sword." After in- 
curring all these dangers, Moses would have arrived at a spot 
where the scanty vegetation would scarcely have repaid him for 
the length of the journey; so that there would have been great 
personal toil, danger to his flock, and serious risk of his own 
life incurred, without any adequate object ; for the flock, when 
it returned (if it really did return), would, in all probability, 
have been so lean, and in such wretched plight, as to appear 
but the ghost of that flock with which the journey was com- 
menced. Again, when Moses returned to Egypt, his brother 
Aaron was sent to meet him by the Lord, and the two brothers 
met each other at the Mount of God, that is, Mount Horeb. 
Moses (it will be recollected) was hastening to Egypt to perform 
his mission. He had fully received all the necessary instructions 
for his great undertaking, and he had no conceivable motive to 
deviate from the direct road. Assuming that he was journeying 
to Egypt from the east of the Gulf of Eylath, he ought to have 
crossed the desert directly from Eylath to Shur, i.e., from Akaba 
to Suez. But to deviate southerly to Mount Sinai, would have 
been to undertake a long and tedious journey, very far from the 
direct route, and wasting needlessly some weeks which, appa- 
rently, might have been better employed. This supposed devia- 
tion has always been a stumbling-block to those Biblical critics 
who have placed the Midian of Jethro' s clan to the east of the 
gulf. ' 

On the other hand, assume the Jebel el-'Ojmah to be Mount 
Sinai, the chain of the Tih Mount Horeb, and the Midian of 
Jethro to have been in the desert of Paran, to the north of 
Mount Horeb, and not only every difficulty vanishes, but every 
incident is as easily comprehended as if we had the whole scene 
before us. "Now Moses was pasturing the flock of Jethro, his 
father-in-law, the priest of Midian; and he led the flock to the 
extremity of the desert (-a-jan ina), and came to the mount of the 
[true] God, even to Horeb/' Here we may observe (1), that 
the terms of this passage apply properly only to an ordinary 
day's journey of the flock in search of pasture, no distant journey 
is hinted at: (2), that "the desert" certainly implies the desert 
in which Jethro's encampment was situated, otherwise it would 
want any intelligible application. Mount Horeb must, there- 



Route of the Exodus. 29 

fore, have bounded the desert in which Jethro was encamped ; 
and (3), that the Tih chain (our Mount Horeb), is actually at 
the " extremity " of the desert of Paran ; for this is the proper 
rendering, and not (as in our Authorized Version), the " backside 
of the desert." The whole chain of Horeb, it will be observed, 
was termed, in a general sense, " the Mountain of God ;" but 
Mount Sinai specially and particularly. 

On the west side of Mount Sinai is the Nukb el-Mureikhy, 
or Ora Rakhi, a pass which crosses the Horeb chain from north 
to south, and which, in the days of Moses, was probably the 
track by which the Amalekite caravans passed from Paran to the 
south of Canaan. Crossing the Horeb chain through this pass, 
Moses might have arrived at the south side of Mount Sinai, and 
there received his mission, near the future site of the Israelite 
encampment. After the Divine revelation, Moses immediately 
returned to Jethro, and asked permission to journey to Egypt, 
to see if his brethren were yet alive. " And Jethro said to 
Moses, Go in peace ; and Moses took his wife and his sons, and 
set them on an ass, and he returned to the land of Egypt." 

Assuming the position of the Midianite camp to have been 
such as we have described, Moses would have arrived, at the end 
of the first or second day's journey, at the northern foot of 
Mount Horeb; for the direction of this chain is from north-west 
to south-east. 

Here, probably, would be their first " Maldn" or resting- 
place for the night (the Menzil of the Arabs), which, in our 
English version, is rendered "inn," a term unjustifiable in the 
modern meaning of that word, for Malon signifies neither an 
inn, nor a caravanserai, by its intrinsic force. Pursuing his 
course along the northern base of the mountain, he would natu- 
rally encounter his brother Aaron, who was advancing from 
Egypt to meet him, by the side of the Holy Mountain. Neither 
would deviate from the proper course ; both would meet in pur- 
suing it. As far, therefore, as regards the residence of Moses 
in Midian, the positions we have suggested are a commentary 
on the Bible, which throws light upon utter darkness, and ex- 
plains everything which was previously obscure. 

VI. We now come to the march of the Israelites from the 
desert of Sin to Mount Sinai. On quitting the former, they 
enter the western extremity of the Debbet er-Eamleh, the great 
sandy belt of the peninsula. Extending from north-west to 
south-east, is the long chain of Mount Horeb on the left hand ; 
and ranges of limestone hills, forming the outward bulwark of 
the Granitic region, extend on the right. The lofty peak of 
Mount Sinai is seen, in the distance, towering over the rest of 



30 A Critical Enquiry into the 

the Horeb chain. The first two stations are Dophkah and 
Alush ; the third is Rephidim, on the southern base of Mount 
Horeb. Here there was, probably, a watering-place, since the 
Israelites seem to have expected water; but the spring, if it 
really had ever existed, was dried up. After the usual murmurs 
of the people for want of water, the deficiency was miraculously 
supplied by Moses, who struck the rock with his wand, upon 
which water immediately gushed out. We are told expressly 
that the rock was "in Horeb," which identifies the position as 
being on the south of the mountain. — "Then came Amalek, and 
fought with Israel in Rephidim." Who and what was Amalek ? 
Jehovah himself, by the mouth of Balaam, informs us, that it 
was the chief of all the nations of the time ; at least of those 
which might be considered as surrounding the kingdom of 
Moab. The German Professor Michaelis (whose opinion is 
adopted by some English writers of high reputation), assures us 
that the Amalekites were a petty tribe of prowling kidnappers, 
living by plunder. As all the authorities quoted by him, instead 
of supporting his argument, completely disprove it, we shall re- 
ject his opinion without hesitation, and assume that the nation 
which could venture to encounter an army of 600,000 men was 
a populous, warlike, and powerful one. If the Israelites had 
not been supported by a miracle, they would, notwithstanding 
their vast numbers, have been destroyed by the Amalekites; 
for, "whenever Moses let down his hand Amalek prevailed." 
The Amalekites were finally repulsed rather than conquered; 
and after this battle hostilities ceased between the two nations. 
But a fearful doom was launched against the Amalekite nation. 
A war, to continue century after century, was declared against 
them by Jehovah, and a sentence of final extermination was 
passed against them ; after which the very memory of this nation 
was to perish from the earth ! Does not this fully establish the 
inference, that they were one of the most powerful nations of 
the age ? Shall we suppose that the Deity himself declared a 
war of extermination against a petty tribe of the prowlers of 
the desert, and that war to continue for centuries? Or that 
Jehovah himself doomed the memory of such a tribe to oblivion, 
when the greater miracle would have been to preserve it ? In 
what the crime of the Amalekites consisted, which could pro- 
voke so terrible a doom ; and how it happened that, though they 
were merely repulsed at Rephidim, the Israelites continued in 
the kingdom of Amalek for thirty-eight years, peaceably and 
without a renewed contest ; we will endeavour to explain in a 
special dissertation " On the doom of Amalek." 

It seems perfectly clear that the numbers which encountered 



Route of the Exodus. 31 

at the battle of Rephidim could not have been less than half a 
million of men. We may reasonably suppose that the Israelites 
in this first battle, where they were so greatly imperilled, would 
have led to the combat at least half their available forces ; and 
that the forces of the Amalekites, led against a nation which 
could bring 600,000 men into the field, could not be less than 
200,000. When Saul, on a future occasion, made war against 
the Amalekites, he deemed an army of 210,000 men to be 
necessary for the purpose ; although, as he had to conduct these 
forces through a vast desert, where water was exceedingly scarce, 
he had every motive to reduce his army to the smallest numbers 
which it would be prudent to employ. The position which we 
have chosen for Rephidim affords ample room for the encounter 
of the large armies actually engaged there ; but we should vainly 
search, in the Granitic district, for an adequate battle-field for 
half a million of men. 

Immediately after the battle Jethro visits the camp of Israel. 
From the position which we have selected for Jethro's Midian, 
this visit would have been easy and practicable. From Rephidim 
to the encampment of Jethro would probably have been only 
two days' journey to a person unencumbered. But the case 
would be far different if we place Midian to the east of the Gulf 
of Eylath. 

We shall only mention one more point with respect to the 
Midianites. Hobab the Midianite, the son of Jethro, and 
brother-in-law of Moses, was so well acquainted with the desert 
of Paran, that he was competent to serve as a guide to the 
Israelites in their marches. If we suppose him to have been 
born, and to have dwelt all his life in the desert of Paran, he 
would naturally have acquired this knowledge ; bat if the seat 
of his nation was on the east of the iElanitic Gulf, his intimate 
knowledge of the desert of Paran would have been equally sin- 
gular and unaccountable. 

From Rephidim the Israelites march to the foot of Mount 
Sinai. 

VII. The most remarkable circumstances which occurred at 
Mount Sinai, with a view to the identification of the mountain, 
were (1), on the day of the covenant, and (2), on the day of 
the idolatrous worship of the golden calf. 

On their arrival at the mountain, a day was appointed for 
the Israelites to enter into a covenant with Jehovah. That 
neither man nor beast might desecrate the mountain by treading 
on it, bounds were set round its foot, to prevent any one from 
approaching. They were not natural bounds, as a late writer 
has supposed, but artificial ones, set up for the occasion (Exod. 



32 A Critical Enquiry into the 

xix. 12). They were not merely limits, but opposed a physical 
impediment to the approach to the mountain (ver. 23) . They 
probably consisted of a ditch and a mound. 

As the monkish Mount Horeb, from the summit of which 
rises the monkish Mount Sinai, is a precipitous rock, ascending 
abruptly from the plain of er-Raheh, and the two lateral wadys, 
such bounds with respect to it would scarcely have been neces- 
sary. This peculiarity of the traditional Horeb and Sinai seems 
alone fatal to their claims, if, at the present day, they could 
really be said to possess any. 

On the morning of the day of the covenant the whole side 
of the mount was covered by a thick cloud, which hid it from 
view ; and Jehovah descended in fire upon the summit of Sinai. 
The people were brought out of the camp to the foot of the 
mountain. This is to be understood not only of the males of 
Israel, but of the whole people, including the women and chil- 
dren, even to the hewer of wood and drawer of water; for the 
whole nation was required to be present, whenever Israel entered 
into a covenant with Jehovah ; even the stranger in the camp 
was brought forward as a witness (Deut. xxix. 10 — 12). There 
would, therefore (including the Asaphsuph), have been more 
than three millions of souls ranged in order at the foot of the 
mountain. 

Moses then ascended to its summit, and afterwards returned 
to the people. As this ascent only occupied part of the day, 
and left ample time for the subsequent delivery of several im- 
portant laws to Moses, we have here a sufficient refutation of 
the absurd opinion of those who imagine that Mount Sinai is to 
be sought for amongst the loftiest mountains of the peninsula. 
The mountains in which great miracles have been performed^ 
have usually been of very moderate elevation, such, for instance, 
as Carmel. A lofty mountain is unsuitable for the purpose; its 
very height abstracts from the evidence of the miracle, if wit- 
nessed from its base. In the present instance the terms of the 
historic narrative render the selection of any elevated mountain 
for the Exodial Sinai absolutely impossible. 

The Divine voice then proclaimed aloud the words of the 
Decalogue; and this was followed by thunder and lightning, 
till the whole mountain appeared to smoke. The people were 
so much alarmed that they removed and stood afar off, between 
the mountain and the camp. In the desert, therefore, at the 
foot of the true Mount Sinai, there should be room for an en- 
campment of three millions of souls with the cattle; and be- 
tween the camp and the mountain space is required for the 
whole people ; first, to be ranged in order at the foot of the 



Route of the Exodus. 33 

mountain ; and, secondly, to retire afar off in the direction of 
the camp. Lord Lindsay, speaking of the traditional Sinai, is 
of opinion that there is not space enough for these purposes in 
the narrow precipitous ravines from which alone the peaks are 
visible, or in any other place or valley in the whole district. 
Whenever the plain of er-Raheh, in front of the traditional 
Horeb, is accurately measured, there can scarcely be a doubt, 
notwithstanding some bold assertions to the contrary, that his 
lordship's opinion will be found correct. But in the Debbet 
er-Ramleh, in front of the Jebel er-'Ojmah, there is, if in any 
part of the peninsula whatever, ample space for all these purposes. 

As the people are said to have beheld from the base of the 
mountain the flame, indicating the presence of God, on its 
summit, this summit should be visible from the plain, or at 
least some conspicuous peak, which in ordinary parlance might 
be termed the summit. This is not the case with respect to the 
traditional Sinai ; but it will, no doubt, be found to be complied 
with in the Jebel el-'Ojmah. We apprehend, therefore, that the 
Jebel el-'Ojmah, and the desert in front of it, will be found not 
only to be a scene appropriate to the great events of the Day of 
the Covenant, but that the former will be the only mountain in 
the whole peninsula which is suitable for the purpose. 

During all the marches of the Israelites, they were preceded 
by a miraculous pillar, which assumed the shape of a cloud by 
day, and a flame of fire by night. This was supposed to indi- 
cate the immediate presence of Jehovah, by which we are of 
course to understand a special emanation of his essence. On 
the Day of the Covenant, this emblem of the presence of Jehovah 
appears to have been transferred to Mount Sinai, the flame and 
cloud being both visible at the same time ; the cloud covering 
the whole side of the mountain like a thick mist, or fog, or dense 
smoke ; the flame shining resplendently from the summit, and 
visible above the intense darkness, which however it did not dis- 
perse. They appear to have continued in this state till the 
setting up of the Nomade temple, or " tabernacle of the con- 
gregation." This was no sooner erected, at the commencement 
of the second year after quitting Egypt, than the miraculous 
Shechinah descended upon the tabernacle. " The cloud of Je- 
hovah was upon the tabernacle by day ; and fire was on it by 
night, in the sight of all the house of Israel, throughout all the 
journeys" (Exod. xl. 38). This indicated the presence of God 
in the sanctuary ; and from that time Moses, who had always 
previously ascended Mount Sinai to commune with Jehovah, 
now ceased to go up, and received all his future instructions in 
the tabernacle of the congregation. 

D 



34 A Critical Enquiry into the 

This will explain some important occurrences on the day on 
which the golden image of the calf, — the brute object of their 
old Egyptian idolatry, was erected. Moses was on the summit 
of Sinai (at the termination of the first forty days which he spent 
there unsustained by mortal food) when the idol Chag, or fes- 
tival having commenced, the people were feasting and dancing 
in the plain below, before the image of the calf. Of all this, 
Moses perceived nothing, because the thick cloud which covered 
the mountain intercepted the view of the plain. Jehovah in- 
formed him of the rebellion of the people ; and the prophet then 
descended the mountain with his servant Joshua. As they were 
going down, Joshua heard the noise of the people, as they 
shouted, and said to Moses, " There is a noise of war in the 
camp/' And Moses said, " It is not the voice of a cry of vic- 
tory, neither is it the voice of a cry of defeat; but it is the voice 
of singing that I hear" (Exod. xxxii. 17, 18). It was not till 
Moses had quitted the cloudy canopy which enveloped the 
mountain, and had entered on the plain, that he perceived the 
people busily engaged in their idolatrous rites. They were 
dancing in a state of nudity before the calf, with the Amalekites 
(their late enemies, but with whom they had now made a truce) 
sitting or standing by, the amused spectators of the infamy of 
their conquerors (Exod. xxxii. 25). Moses afterwards reduced 
the calf into powder, and " cast the dust thereof into the brook 
(bm) that descended out of the mountain" (Deut. ix. 21). 

It will be seen from the preceding statement, that we are 
not to attribute to any peculiar conformation of Mount Sinai 
the fact that Moses heard the noise of the idolatrous feast be- 
fore he could perceive what was passing in the plain. Had it 
not been for the dense cloud which enveloped the mountain, he 
must have seen what was passing, from the mountain top ; as the 
summit itself was visible from the plain, when not obscured by 
the miraculous cloud. The Nachal or brook, into which the 
dust of the golden calf was thrown, appears to be the Wady el- 
Mureikhy. The mountain out of which it descends may mean 
either Horeb or Sinai. 

The position of the Israelitic encampment at Mount Sinai, 
with the extent of ground which they occupied for the pasturage 
of their cattle, is distinctly marked in the first verse of the first 
chapter of Deuteronomy, although there is an evident error in 
the Hebrew text. The verse should be read as follows : "These 
be the words which Moses spake unto all Israel, in the 'Arabah, 
or plain, of the Jordan ; [being a repetition of the law, which he 
had before delivered to them] in the Midbar, or wilderness, over 
against the Red Sea, between Paran and Laban, and Tophel, and 



Route of the Exodus. 35 

Chatzeroth, and Di-zahab." Some words to the purport of 
those between brackets, we think, have been omitted by the 
copyists, — the words 'Arabah and Midbar have been trans- 
posed ; — for the former clearly describes the plain of the Jordan, 
and the latter, the desert of Sinai ; and the words )iyn xaa. (im- 
properly translated " on this side the Jordan") have been inter- 
polated in this place, as in several others, from the ignorant 
marginal note of some Judsean doctor returned from the cap- 
tivity. 

The proof that the five local names relate to the desert of 
Sinai, and have no connexion with the plain of the Jordan, where 
the book of Deuteronomy was composed, is direct and incon- 
trovertible. Three of these places can be satisfactorily identified 
with names of places still in existence in the Sinaitic peninsula. 
Paran is well known to be the modern Feiran. Chatzeroth was 
certainly on the site of Hudhera, because the two names rrten and 

Xj~As>- are identical ; and the situation of Hudhera is proved to 

be the right one, by its relative position with respect to Di- 
zahab. The last named place, which signifies "the golden," 
i. e., port (El-Dorado, as a Spaniard would term it) was indis- 
putably on the site of Minat edh-Dhahab (u^JbJJi < ^r )^ which 
has exactly the same signification as Di-zahab, and is the best 
port on the Gulf of Akaba. As to the other two places, Tophel 
was in all probability a place near Paran, in which the mineral 
called the Tafal, or yellow pipe-clay, is dug. As this article 
would have been of great use to the Israelites when encamped 
at Mount Sinai, it is probable that they purchased it in large 
quantities from the Amalekites, and were particularly familiar 
with the place where it was procured. The hills where it is still 
excavated appear to be a little to the north-east of Paran. 
Laban was probably some mountain of peculiar whiteness in the 
Horeb chain. The desert at the south of the Jebel el-'Ojmah 
exactly agrees with these indications. It is between all these 
five places ; which are only mentioned as well known names, indi- 
cating the central position between them, and not as assuming 
that the actual pasture grounds of the Israelites extended so far 
south as Di-zahab, or Paran. The Granitic region was the 
stronghold of the Amalekites, and into this the Hebrews could 
not have penetrated. 

One only criterion remains to be mentioned for the purpose 
of identifying the Mosaic Sinai with the Jebel el-'Ojmah of the 
modern Arabs. This, combined with the proofs which have pre- 
ceded it, establishes this important identification with absolute 
certainty. We have shewn that the miraculous pillar, which 

d2 



36 A Critical Enquiry into the 

assumed alternately the appearance of a cloud and of fire, set- 
tled upon the tabernacle of the congregation immediately after 
it was erected. "On the day that the tabernacle was reared up, 
the cloud covered the tabernacle, namely, the tent of the testi- 
mony ; and at even there was (as it were) the appearance of fire, 
until the morning. So it was always, the cloud covered it by 
day, and the appearance of fire by night. And when the cloud 
was taken up from the tabernacle, then after that the chil- 
dren of Israel journeyed; and in the place where the cloud 
abode, there the children of Israel pitched their tents" (Numb. 
ix. 15 — 17). The miraculous pillar therefore was the guide of 
all their journeys; it indicated all their marches and encamp- 
ments. 

After a residence of eleven months and nineteen days at the 
foot of Mount Sinai, the march was resumed northwards to 
Kadesh. The miraculous cloud was seen slowly to elevate itself 
from the tabernacle of the congregation ; the tents were struck, 
the baggage collected, the beasts of burthen laden ; the whole 
encampment was on the march. The guiding pillar then moved 
in the direction of the Nukb el-Mureikhy, and leading the march 
through the Horeb chain by that pass, it conducted them into 
the desert of Paran. The encampment for the first night was in 
that desert, on the north of the chain of Mount Horeb. " And 
it came to pass on the twentieth day of the second month, in 
the second year, that the cloud was taken up from off the taber- 
nacle of the testimony. And the children of Israel proceeded 
in their journeyings from the wilderness of Sinai; and the cloud 
sunk down to rest (p»n pw) in the wilderness of Paran " (Num. 
x. 11, 12). 

If the whole peninsula be searched through, there is not an- 
other situation in which this could have happened, combined with 
the existence of a mountain in any respect suitable to the descrip- 
tion of Mount Sinai. Let this be admitted, as we think it will, 
and the long-pending discussion respecting the site of Mount 
Sinai may be considered as now set at rest. 



Chapter IV. — Kadesh. 

The apparent object of the marches of the Israelites from 
Horeb, was to commence the conquest of Canaan from its south 
border, in that part which may be termed the Amorite High- 
lands in opposition to the Shephelah, or Lowlands, occupied by 
the Philistines. The mountainous country of the Amorites was 
that which afterwards became the possession of the tribe of 



Route of the Exodus. 37 

Judah ; and which, in the New Testament, is called the Hill 
Country of Judsea. It was now inhabited by the Amorites, a 
people "■ tall as the cedar, strong as the oak/' and among whom 
was still existing in their cities a considerable remnant of the an- 
cient Anakim, or giants. Of the stature of the Anakim, we may 
judge from the description given of them by the spies at Kadesh: 
" And we saw the giants, the sons of Anak ; and we were in our 
own sight as grasshoppers; and so were we in their sight" 
(Num. xiii. 33). This was a formidable nation to encounter; 
but they were still infinitely less terrible than their western 
neighbours the Philistines, the most warlike nation of t the East, 
and who may be termed the Spartans of Asia. 

On marching from Horeb to attack the mountainous region 
of the Amorites, the best position for the final encampment, pre- 
vious to entering the Amorite territory, was certainly on the 
site of the modern el-Khalesah. Let us, therefore, assume that 
this might have been the site of Kadesh, and examine how far 
it will agree with the requirements of the Scriptural history in 
the same manner which we have adopted with respect to Mount 
Sinai. 

The route across the desert of Paran northwards has never 
yet been properly explored. The modern name of this desert is 

" the Tih " (<uj() a word which is explained by the Arabic lexi- 

cographers to mean, when used indefinitely, any desert through 
which the traveller wanders in a state of surprise or confusion ; 

-j — o 

but with the definite article prefixed <usil, its meaning is re- 
stricted to the particular desert of which we are now treating. 
This desert is peculiarly and pre-eminently the Tih, and it is 
very probable after all that it is a mere corruption of the Hebrew 
n»st, or the Dry Country, a name which was used, as we have 
before observed, with peculiar application to this region. The 

Arabic verb *\j seems formed from the noun rather than the 
noun from the verb. Moses describes this desert in terms which 
fully justify the modern Arabic definition, of a desert whose hor- 
rors confound and astonish the traveller. " And when we de- 
parted from Horeb, we went through all that great and terrible 
wilderness in the way to the hill country of the Amorites ; and 
we came to Kadesh Barnea " (Deut. i. 19). In another text 
he describes it " as that great and terrible wilderness wherein 
were fiery serpents and scorpions, and drought, wherein there 
was no water" (viii. 15). The stations between Horeb and 
Kadesh appear to have been sixteen. Whenever the desert of 



38 A Critical Enquiry into the 

Paran is properly explored, it is probable that most of these 
names will be found to be still in use (only slightly corrupted) 
among the modern Arabs. That there is a reasonable prospect 
of this will be seen more fully in the sequel. In the meantime, 
all we know of the route is, that it did not join the road from 
Akaba to el-Khalesah, but must have kept to the west of that 
track. It is not improbable that it may have followed, as far 
as practicable, the course of the Wady el-Arish northwards. 

The first two stations are not named by Moses. The third 
seems to have been Tab'erah, which also received the name of 
Kibroth hat-Ta'awah, or the Graves of Desire, i. e., of those 
who desired, or longed after, flesh-meat, from weariness of the 
insipid taste of the manna. Here the murmurs of the people 
for flesh induced the miraculous supply of quails, which was fol- 
lowed by a very great plague, in which perished a multitude of 
the people. It is not improbable that the 'Ain er-Rejern, the 
fountain of the cairn, or tomb, may still preserve the memory 
of Kibroth hat-Ta'awah. The fourth station was Chatzeroth, 
which is not to be confounded with the Chatzeroth to the north 
of Di-zahab. There were anciently several places of this name 
in the peninsula. The next three stations were Rithmah, Rim- 
mon-Paretz, and Libnah. Libnah seems to have been not only 
a city, but a place of some importance. We find that when 
Edom threw off the yoke of the kings of Judah in the days of 
Jehoram (cir. 885 b.c) Libnah also revolted and regained its 
independence (2 Kings viii. 22). It seems not improbable that 
this city was on the point where the caravan-route from Paran 
to Kadesh and Beersheba intersected that from Eylath to Shur. 

Proceeding northwards from Libnah, the next stations were 
Rissah, Kehelath, and Har-Shapher. Har-Shapher might pro- 
bably be the Jebel Yelek. The six next stations were Charadah, 
Makheloth, Tachath, Tarach, Mithkah, and Chashmonah. The 
next station to Chashmonah was Kadesh Barnea, which is often 
called simply Kadesh. In the list of stations (Numb, xxxiii. 
30) the name of this city is omitted in its proper place between 
Chashmonah and Moserah. That it ought to have stood here is 
certain, because the six following stations (as we shall prove 
indisputably) were on the route which the Israelites took to the 
Bed Sea (i. e., the Gulf of Eylath) after quitting Kadesh. Ka- 
desh was the seventeenth station after leaving Mount Sinai. 
The distance between the two places, by the way of Mount Se'yr, 
is said (Deut. i. 2) to be eleven days' journey. But this is the 
rate of more rapid travelling than that of the Israelites : their 
average day's march may be estimated at ten miles ; and, as the 
entire distance between the Jebel el-'Ojmah and El-Khalesah, 



Route of the Exodus. 39 

by the route we have indicated, would be about 170 miles, 
the number of the stations agrees very well with the actual 
distance. 

It will, of course, be understood that the Israelites did not 
encamp in the city of Kadesh, which could not have contained 
(if its inhabitants had quitted it for their accommodation) the 
three-hundredth part of their numbers. They encamped on the 
west of the city, and in the desert of Paran. Kadesh was near 
the uttermost border of the kingdom of Edom. Some modern 
writers, to favour their peculiar theories, have excluded the 
chain of mountains on the north-west of the Arabah (which we 
have termed the Western Mount Se'yr) from the territories of 
Edom; but this view of the border of Edom is clearly erro- 
neous. How admirably situated the position of Kadesh was for 
an invasion of the Amorite territory, will appear from the map. 
It was about fifteen miles to the south of the Canaanite border, 
and near the territories both of the Philistines and the Amo- 
rites ; so that if these nations felt any alarm at the unexpected 
propinquity of a wandering nation of three millions of souls, 
neither could tell against which the attack was contemplated ; 
and being scions of different ethnical stocks, they were not likely 
to combine either for attack or defence. 'Arad, a principal city 
of the Amorites, was marked by the Israelites as the first object 
of attack ; and Kadesh was peculiarly well situated for a march 
against this city. 

We may now proceed to the various criteria, which all unite 
in identifying the site of Kadesh with that of El-Khalesah. 

1. Kadesh was exactly on the line of the south border of 
Israel, as marked out by Moses (Numb, xxxiv. 3 — 5) and Joshua 
(xv. 2, 4). This border extended from the southern limit of 
the Dead Sea, called by Moses the Salt Sea, to the mouth of 
the Nachal Mitzrayim, the modern Wady el-'Arish. Both the 
north and south borders of Israel, as defined by Moses, were 
deduced from east to west, or from west to east, as nearly as 
possible in a straight line. If we draw such a direct line, on 
any good map, between the mouth of the Nachal Mitzrayim 
and the southern extremity of the Salt Sea, it will pass through 
El-Khalesah, or at a very short distance to the north of that 
site. The intermediate positions between the Dead Sea and 
Kadesh were the Ma'aleh Akrabbim (or Ascent of the Scorpions) 
and the desert of Tzin. Ma'aleh in Hebrew signifies exactly 
such a steep and dangerous pass or ascent as the modern Arabs 
describe by the words Nukb or Akabah. The Ma'aleh Akrabbim 
was certainly that remarkable pass by which travellers ascend 
from the Wady el-'Arabah to the south of Judsea, and which is 



40 A Critical Enquiry into the 

now called the Nukb es-Sufah. The northern extremity of this 
pass, at the village of Kurnab, lies exactly on the proposed line. 
The situation of Kurnab agrees with that assigned by Eusebius 
to Tamar, or Gafjiapco, and Tamar is described by Ezekiel as 
lying exactly on the south border of Israel (Ezek. xlvii. 19 ; 
xlviii. 28). The. word Tamar, it will be observed, signifies a 
palm-tree ; and the next position on the south border, proceed- 
ing westward, after quitting Tamar and the Ma'aleh Akrabbim, 
is the desert of Tzin. As ps is used by the Talmudists to signify 
a dwarf palm-tree, the cognate meanings of this word and Tamar 
appear a strong indication of their propinquity. The desert of 
Tzin was in the east of Kadesh, which therefore follows imme- 
diately after this desert in the western direction of the boundary. 
We may therefore place the desert of Tzin in the intermediate 
position between Kurnab and El-Khalesah. After quitting El- 
Khalesah, the boundary proceeds through several places, which 
cannot be identified in the present state of our geographical 
knowledge of this region, to the mouth of the Wady el-Arish. 
The general direction may possibly have been collaterally with 
the bed of the torrent now called the Wady el-Khubarah. 

2. Kadesh was on the exact spot where the caravan-route 
from Hebron to Egypt, by Shur, crossed the south border of 
Israel. When the capital of Lower Egypt was at Memphis, the 
ordinary caravan -route from Canaan to Egypt was across the 
desert from Beersheba to the northern extremity of the Gulf of 
Suez. It was not till the founding of Alexandria that the coast 
road became the common route between the two countries. The 
route then from Hebron to Egypt was by, 1. Beersheba; 2. Ka- 
desh; 3. Beer-lachai-roi ; 4. Bered; 5. Shur. It was by this 
route that Hagar, when she fled from Sarah, was proceeding to 
Egypt, her native country (Gen. xvi. 7 and 14). When Jacob 
and his family were on their journey to Egypt, they also took 
the route by Beersheba (Gen. xlvi. 1). 

El-Khalesah, which we identify with Kadesh, is about fifteen 
miles to the south-west of Beersheba, and exactly on the route 
from thence to Shur, the modern Suez. The station of Bered 
(we believe) still retains its ancient name. The whole route 
may be easily traced out, when travellers, actuated by the true 
spirit of discovery, will venture to deviate from the trite and 
ordinary tracks. 

3. Kadesh was just beyond the extreme limits of the kingdom 
of Edom. It belonged apparently not to Edom, but to Amalek, 
for the Israelites never entered the kingdom of Edom. It will 
be seen in Joshua xv. 28, that Beersheba lay to the north of the 
border of Edom ; and as El-Khalesah is a little to the south-west 



Route of the Exodus. 41 

of Beersheba, it would just be beyond the north-west corner of 
the limits of the children of Esau. 

4. Kadesh lay between two deserts ; those of Paran to the 
west, and of Tzin to the east. When the Israelites first visited 
Kadesh, they encamped in the desert of Paran ; on their last 
visit, in that of Tzin. El-Khalesah is exactly on the borders of 
the desert of Paran, which comes up to it on the western side ; 
and the desert of Tzin will naturally be sought for on the east 
of El-Khalesah, between that site and the Pass of Sufah and 
the village of Kurnab. When the spies proceeded from Kadesh 
to Hebron, they passed through the desert of Tzin (Numb. xiii. 
21, 22). This agrees exactly with the supposition that El-Kha- 
lesah is the true site of Kadesh. 

5. The desert in the immediate vicinity of Kadesh (though 
part of the desert of Paran, and perhaps of Tzin) is called (Psalm 
xxix. 8) the desert of Kadesh. 

" The voice of Jehovah breaketh the cedars ; 
Yea, Jehovah breaketh the cedars of Lebanon. 
He maketh them also to dance like a calf; 
Lebanon and Sirion like the calf of the buffalo. 
The voice of Jehovah makes the desert to tremble, 
Jehovah causes to tremble the desert of Kadesh." 

Here Kadesh and Lebanon are obviously mentioned as the 
two extremities of Israel on the south and north ; for the north- 
ern boundary crossed over the Lebanon chain from Gebal, by 
Mount Hor, to the Le-bo Chamath, and the southern boundary 
passed from the mouth of the Nachal Metzrayim, through Ka- 
desh, to the Dead Sea. That the desert round El-Khalesah was 
formerly called the desert of Kadesh, may be easily proved. 
El-Khalesah was in the time of the Macedonians and Romans 
called EXovaa, or Elusa. This is proved both by the similarity 
of names, and the distances, in the Peutinger Itinerary, on the 
road from iElia Capitolina (Jerusalem) to Aila (Akaba). The 
Jewish name for Elusa (as used in the first century after Christ) 
was NinbrT. 

Now we find that in the time of St. Jerome, the desert 
around Elusa still retained the name of the desert of Kadesh, 
although the name of the city itself had been changed by the 
Idumaeans to Alusa, from which the Macedonians formed the 
name of EXovcra. As the passage in Jerome is curious, we shall 
cite it in full : it occurs in his life of Hilarion : — " Quantum 
autem fuerit in eo studii, ut nullum fratrem quamvis humilem, 
quamvis pauperem prseteriret, vel illud indicio est, quod vadens 
in desertum Cades, ad unum de discipulis suis visendum, cum 



42 A Critical Enquiry into the 

infinito agmine monachorum pervenit Elusam, eo forte die, quo 
anniversaria solennitas, omnem oppidi populum in templum 
Veneris congregaverat. Colunt autem illam ob Luciferum, cujus 
cultui Saracenorurn natio dedita est. Sed et ipsurn oppidum ex 
magna parte semibarbarum est, propter loci situm." Here we 
find the confutation of a common error (adopted inadvertently 
by Dean Milman, History of the Jews, vol. ii., p. 68), that Hir- 
canus having subjugated Idurasea, "compelled the ancient rivals 
of his people to submit to circumcision, and to adopt the Jewish 
religion, and so completely incorporated the two nations that the 
name of Idumsea appears no more in history." The conquests 
of Hircanus only extended to that part of the south of Judsea 
which the Idumseans had seized upon during the Babylonian 
captivity. The territories of the Idumseans in the Negeb still 
remained distinct, till the old territorial divisions of the Negeb 
were incorporated in that of the Third Palestine. Ptolemy 
enumerates the cities of Idumaea, one of which is "EXovaa ; and 
from St. Jerome's life of Hilarion we find that the people re- 
tained their old idolatry, and the use of the Aramean dialect, till 
the beginning of the fourth century after Christ. 

The Elusans, according to Jerome, were Sabaeans, worship- 
ping the planet Venus, on its appearance as the morning star. 
This planet is mentioned by St. Nilus (an excellent authority on 
the subject) as a favourite object of the worship of the Naba- 
thaean Arabs, who are described by him, as arpcp tg> irpwlvw 
irpoatcvvovvTes teal dvovres avareXXovri. From this we may 
discern the origin of the name of Elusa. It is evidently the 
same name as the Alush, on the route from the desert of Sin to 
Mount Sinai ; and both these names appear to signify the planet 
Venus, the favourite object of the veneration of the inhabitants. 
Herodotus, speaking of the Persians, observes, ^EirLiiefxaOriKaa-t 
Be teal rfj Ovpavlrj Qveiv, mapa re ' Aaavpiwv jiaQovje^ teal ' Apa- 
j3l(ov. KaXeovcn Be Aaavpioi rrjv ^A^poBirrjv, MvXcrra' ^ApajSioi, 
Be, 'AXvna' Ukpcrat Be Mirpav (Clio, 131). For the AXirra of 
Herodotus we ought perhaps to read AXvrra, and we may pro- 
bably trace the name in the Phrygian AXvBBa ; for Phrygia was 
peculiarly imbued with the Syrian superstitions. 

For the name of Kadesh, or Kadesh Barnea, Canon Stanley 
suggests a derivation which is evidently not the true one. — " Its 
very name awakens our attention, — ' The Holy Place/ the same 
name by which Jerusalem itself is still called in Arabic, El- 
Khods." — This is an obvious inadvertence on the part of the 
pleasing writer of Sinai and Palestine. There is not an instance 
in the Hebrew language in which Kadesh is used in the signifi- 
cation of holy. The interesting visions therefore which Canon 



Route of the Exodus. 43 

Stanley has raised on this error, are as unsubstantial as his 
identification of Petra with Kadesh, in which he follows on the 
track of the rabbins. We need scarcely remark that the proper 
adjective to express the idea of " holy " in Hebrew is urn,?. The 
word trij? is always used in a bad sense ; and therefore Gesenius, 
with some propriety, marks the distinction between them by 
rendering the former "sanctus," and the latter "sacer," — a 
word which is often used to signify the reverse of " holy." Ka- 
desh, with its feminine Kedeshah, signifies a person dedicated 
by vow to the service of one of the idols of polytheism : it is 
the *Iepohov\o$ of the Greeks ; and so numerous were these 
devotees, that one temple alone in Cappadocia possessed five 
thousand of them. The groves which surrounded the temples 
of polytheism were haunts of debauchery, where in tents or 
buildings erected for the purpose, these wretched beings prosti- 
tuted themselves as a sacred duty, highly meritorious to the idol 
whom they served. The jam, or meretricious hire, received as 
the reward of these debaucheries, was paid into the treasury of 
the temple for the profit of the priests. Such were the rites of 
polytheism, the enquiry into which is disgusting in itself, and 
yet of the utmost importance to the illustration of Biblical his- 
tory. The most formidable objection ever made against revealed 
religion, can only be refuted by a thorough comprehension of 
some of the worst features of polytheism. 

The preceding remarks will conduct us to the true origin of 
the name of Kadesh Barnea. It means simply Bar-nea' (the 
proper name of a man), the Kadesh, or devoted slave, of the 
planet Venus, the guardian deity of the place. Being probably 
wealthy before his consecration, this person might have built a 
temple to Alytta, which attracted votaries, and led to the foun- 
dation of a city, which in gratitude to its founder took the name 
of Kadesh Bar-nea 3 ; or the true Syrian name might always 
have been Alusa, and Kadesh have been a term of contempt ap- 
plied to it by the Israelites in mockery of its origin. Viewing 
the matter in this light, we cannot agree with Canon Stanley in 
holding that the word Kadesh signifies " the holy place." 

The five criteria which we have successively examined esta- 
blish so clearly the identity of Kadesh with El-Khalesah, that 
it might appear perfectly needless to adduce any further proofs ; 
yet, in the course of the next chapter, additional evidence will 
present itself of such a nature, that without any reference to 
collateral proofs, it would be alone sufficient to demonstrate irre- 
fragably the proposition for which we contend. 



44 A Critical Enquiry into the 



Chapter V. — The Thirty-eight Years' Wandering. 

I* After the rebellion at Kadesh, caused by the report of 
ten of the twelve spies sent to examine the land of Canaan, the 
whole nation of Israel was punished for its perverseness, by the 
sentence to wander round the borders of Edom, till all the males 
of the military tribes, who were included in the census taken at 
Mount Sinai, should have passed away from the earth. A whole 
generation was destined to lay its bones in the desert. The 
march was to commence, the following morning, for the Red 
Sea (*pprp! ^ Num. xiv. 25) . It is, of course, certain that by 
the Hed Sea is meant the Gulf of Eylath; for the intention of 
the people, in the height of the rebellion, was to elect a new 
leader, who should conduct them back to Egypt. They hoped 
probably to return to their former slavery, and that the Egyp- 
tians, content with the punishment of their chiefs, would spare 
the multitude. To have conducted them, therefore, to the Gulf 
of Suez would have been to throw the most dangerous tempta- 
tion in their way. It was desirable to conduct them as far as 
possible from the direct path to Egypt ; and Etzyon-geber, to 
which their march was to be pointed, was exactly on the oppo- 
site side of the peninsula. 

II. When the morning came, however, the spirit of rebellion 
had again seized upon the people in a new form. They were 
now determined to march against the Amorites. They were 
assured by Moses that their presumptuous attempt would end in 
a miserable failure ; but they were not to be deterred. Moses, 
and the ark of the covenant, remained in the encampment ; the 
cloudy pillar continued over the tabernacle ; and they marched, 
no longer conducted, or accompanied, by the Strength of Israel, 
against the Amorites of the highlands. Among these Amorites, 
in what may be termed "the debateable land/' (viz., that part 
of the ancient territory of Se'yr which was not included in 
Edom,) was settled a colony of Amalekites. They appear to have 
been totally independent of the king of Amalek, and to have 
made common cause with the Amorites. The two nations at- 
tacked the invading Israelites, routed them completely, and, 
pursuing after them, chased them, to use the expression of 
Moses (Deut. i. 44), as a swarm of bees would chase any one 
who had irritated them, through the debateable land of Mount 
Se'yr, to the city of Tzephath, afterwards named Chormah. 

All this agrees with the position we have assigned to Kadesh. 
The expedition was intended against 'Arad, which still retains 
its ancient name, as Tell 'Arad. The city of Chormah may, we 



Route of the Exodus. 45 

think, be identified with the modern site of 'Ar'arah. They 
had evidently passed considerably beyond Chormah, and seemed 
to have reached 'Arad, from which they were chased back to 
Chormah. The expression inn rati in Numb. xiv. 40, may either 
be translated " the top of the hill," or " the chief city of the 
hill country." If the former, it applies to 'Ar'arah, or more 

properly £-p -c, which signifies, in Arabic, " the top of the 

mountain ;" if the latter, it must be understood of the city of 
'Arad, which appears to have been the capital of this part of the 
Amorite Highlands. 

The passage, Numb. xiv. 40 — 45, ought, we think, to be 
thus translated : " And they rose up early in the morning, and 
were about to ascend to the top of the mountain [or to the chief 
city of the hill country], saying, Verily here we are, and we 
will go up to the place which Jehovah spoke of, for we have 
sinned. And Moses said, How is this? ye are transgressing 
the command of Jehovah, and it shall not prosper. Go not up, 
that ye be not smitten before your enemies, for Jehovah will 
not be in the midst of you. For the Amalekites and the Ca- 
naanites are there to encounter you, and ye shall fall by the 
sword, because ye have turned away from following Jehovah, 
and Jehovah will not be with you. Nevertheless they presumed 
to go up to the top of the mountains [or, the capital of the hill 
country] . But the ark of the covenant of Jehovah, and Moses, 
departed not out of the camp. Then came down the Amalekites 
and the Canaanites, the inhabitants of that mountainous country, 
and smote them, and discomfited them, as far as the Chormah 
[or the devoted city] " 

III. After this defeat the Israelites acquiesced in the sen- 
tence which they had now no hopes of evading, and commenced 
their march to Etzyon-geber on the Gulf of Eylath. The route 
which they were now pursuing was, at that time, the great track 
of the Arabian caravans, from the city of Eylath to Gaza and 
Hebron. Under the Roman dominion, it became one of the 
principal roads of the Petrsea, and will be found in the Peutinger 
Itinerary as the route from iElia Capitolina to Aila. It was 
more convenient than the shorter route through the Arabah, 
because it was better watered, and passed by several cities of 
note ; as, Elusa (El-Khalesah), Oboda, or Eboda ('Abdeh), Lusa 
(Wady el-Lusan), and Gypsaria (Ghudhir). It happens, fortu- 
nately, that this is one of the very few routes of the desert 
which have been investigated by a competent traveller. The 
learned Biblicist to whom we are indebted for the details of this 
route, misled by his previous impressions as to the site of Mount 



46 A Critical Enquiry into the 

Hor, failed to discover the important, or rather inestimable use, 
to which this route may be applied in the elucidation of the 
Exodus. Nor has any subsequent writer examined it with a 
more discerning criticism. It is, however, certain, that on a 
careful comparison of the modern route with the Pentateuchal 
history, all the stations of the Israelite encampments, mentioned 
by Moses, between Kadesh and Etzyon-geber, may still be identi- 
fied with the modern names by which these stations are now known 
to the Arabs of the desert. This fact, which we shall fully sub- 
stantiate, is perhaps the greatest discovery which has yet been 
made in Biblical geography. Here we have an important route, 
extending for a distance of about 130 miles, clearly identified 
in every station with the existing landmarks of the desert ; the 
sites of Kadesh and Mount Hor established with a precision 
never before hoped for ; and the whole route of the Exodus 
placed upon a clear and satisfactory basis by the light which this 
discovery throws upon it. 

In these identifications of the old with the modern names, 
no possible suspicion of fraud can exist. The Jewish rabbi and 
the Christian monk both agreed in placing Kadesh and Mount 
Hor in very different situations from those which this route will 
point out. No one has had an interest in imposing fictitious 
names upon the stations ; yet there, after a period of more than 
thirty-three centuries, they still remain in the rarely-trodden 
desert, delivered down from one generation of Nomades to an- 
other, as if preserved by some peculiar providence to vindicate 
the truth of the Mosaic history. This route was twice, at least, 
travelled by the Israelites ; and on both journeys the encamp- 
ments were the same. The first journey is described in Numb, 
xxxiii. 30 — 36 ; the last in Deut. x. 6 and 7. By comparing 
the two together, it is easy to form a correct list of the sta- 
tions. 

1. The first station, after quitting Kadesh, was Beeroth 
beney-Ya'akan, or the Wells of the sons of Ya'akan (Deut. x. 6). 
In Numb. xxx. 31, it is named elliptically Beney-Ya'akan, and 
placed, by an error of the transcriber, after Moserah, though 
its proper place is evidently before this station, as it correctly 
occurs in Deut. x. 6. This station may be identified with the 
modern Birein, which has exactly the same meaning in the 
vulgar Arabic as Beeroth in Hebrew. It is also about twenty 
miles south of Kadesh, which will be found to be the average 
distance of the stations on this route from each other. The 
stations seem to be all of them the known caravan stations in 
the time of Moses, and on that account have probably been the 
better preserved in the desert. There were, perhaps, interme- 



Route of the Exodus. 47 

diate stations in the Hebrew march, the names of which, being 
less known, have been omitted. 

2. The second station was Moserah (Deut. x. 6), or Moseroth 
(Numb, xxxiii. 30). This name still exists, with a slight varia- 
tion, in the Wady Moseriah. 

3. No mention is made by Moses of the precise spot where 
the rebellion of Korah took place; but the memory of the 
miraculous punishment of this rebellious Levite, appears to be 
preserved in the name of Wady Koreyah, an intermediate posi- 
tion between Moserah and the following station. 

4. The next station is called in Deuteronomy Hag-gudh- 
godhah ; and in Numbers, Chor Hag-gidhgadh. There can be 
no doubt whatever that this is to be identified with the Wady 

el-Gudhagidh. The city which the Nabathseans called ]5cLj 
and the Greeks "Avapa, might probably be placed at this station, 
unless we are to suppose that it is the Aramean name for that 
city which the Israelites called Libnah. It is mentioned both 
by Ptolemy and the geographer Stephanus, as one of the cities 
of the Arabian Petrsea, and Ptolemy places it in long. 66± and 
lat. 29-| ; but his positions are not at all to be depended upon, 
being in many cases extravagantly erroneous. 

5. Proceeding from Gudhgodhah the next station was Yot- 
bah, not Yotbath or Yotbathah, as it appears in our translations. 
The error arises from confounding the affix of motion to a place 
with the name to which it is appended. Yotbah appears to have 
been a city of importance. When Edom established its inde- 
pendence on the kings of Judah, and dangerous confederacies 
were constantly formed in the south against the Judseans, the 
later kings of Judah found it necessary to counterbalance these 
confederacies by forming alliances with some of the princes of 
the independent cities lying to the south of Edom. Thus 
Manasseh took for a wife Meshullemeth, the daughter of Cha- 
rutz of Yotbah ; and Josiah married Chamutal, the daughter of 
Jeremiah of Libnah. The intrigues of the Tyrians established 
at Rhinocorura, rendered these alliances absolutely necessary. 
We find the Tyrians mentioned in the Psalms composed at this 
period, and in the later prophets, as joining with the Philistines 
and the nations of the Negeb in the confederacies against Judah. 
This could only apply to their colony at the mouth of the Nachal 
Mitzrayim, which certainly existed in the time of Isaiah, and 
probably as early as the times of Solomon, or even David. It 
is not at all improbable that Hiram persuaded David to permit 
the Tyrians to establish a colony in this position, that they 
might renew their Oriental commerce, and that this suggested 
to Solomon the idea of compelling them to admit him as a 



48 A Critical Enquiry into the 

partner in this lucrative traffic. The Sichor Mitzrayim (the 
Phoenician name for the Nachal Mitzrayim) is really the Sichor 
mentioned by Isaiah xxiii. 3 ; for the Indian traffic expressed by 
the figurative term of the harvest of the YE OR (the Aramean 
for a Nachal or torrent), was certainly a better revenue to Tyre 
than the traffic of Egypt. The grain and other agricultural 
produce of Egypt could have been of little importance, com- 
pared with the riches of the Indian commerce poured into Tyre 
from the colony on -the Nachal Mitzrayim. To secure this 
invaluable settlement againt the ambition of the kings of Judah 
was the great object of all the confederacies of the Negeb 
alluded in Scripture, and which were constantly kept on foot by 
the predominant influence of Tyrian gold. 

To return to Yotbah ; this city, as we are informed in Deut. 
x. 7, was situated in a country fertilized by several Nachals or 
torrents. The site and name may be discovered in the Wady 

el-'Adhbeh; for ^j^. in Arabic has exactly the same meaning 

as hitq; in Hebrew. The origin of the two words is in fact the 

same, sto and c-jJ being both the same primitive root signifying 

good, and the » and s being merely prefixes to complete the 

triliteral roots, after a principle everywhere traceable in the 
roots of the Semitic — all or most of which were originally bi- 
literal. The allusion of the name appears to be to the goodness 
of the water with which this region was so plentifully supplied. 
Adhbeh is exactly that " land of Nachals of water," which 
Yotbah is described as being, in Deut. x. 7. 

6. On quitting the pleasant station of Yotbah, the Israelites 
had to cross a chain of mountains which runs along the west 
side of the Gulf of Eylath to arrive at Etzyon-geber. This 
chain is traversed by a defile, called in Arabic the Nukb, or 
pass. The Hebrew 'Ebronah (mentioned in Numb, xxxiii. 34) 
has in this place the same meaning as the Arabic Nukb, and 
means the pass of the mountains. The station of the Israelite 
encampment was probably on the west side of the pass. 

7. Etzyon-geber seems to have been situated at the north- 
ern extremity of the Gulf of Eylath. The city of Eylath itself 
was situated to the south-east of Etzyon-geber, and on the site 
of the modern Akaba. D'Anville has fallen into some singular 
errors as to the sites of these two cities. He transposes their 
relative situations, and grossly mistakes a passage in Dr. Shaw's 
travels. The site of Eylath can be securely identified with the 
modern castle of Akaba. The old grove of palm-trees from 
which Eylath took its name is now still existing at Akaba ; and 



Route of the Exodus. 49 

the Hebrew nb>« and the Syrian )i \ >] may be identified with 
the Roman Aila and iElana, and these again with the Arabic 
<ujj. The identity of Aila and Akaba is clearly established by 
the Arabian geographers. The Arabic writers have converted 
the name of Etzyon-geber (the back-bone of the yiant, with re- 
ference to the reefs surrounding the coast) into ^^as.. The 
exact site of this city seems at present unknown. What is cer- 
tain is that it must have been to the north-west of Eylath. 
D'Anville, and others who have adopted his opinion, have appa- 
rently been misled by the text (Deut. ii. 8), in which the two 
cities are mentioned in the inverse order in which they would 
have been approached by the Israelites. The Hebrew writers 
were careless of minute accuracy so long as the sense was intel- 
ligible ; and Moses mentioned Eylath first, as being the more 
important of the two cities. With Etzyon-geber the list ter- 
minates ; and it will now have been seen that all the ancient 
names between Kadesh and this city are still preserved with the 
most wonderful accuracy in the modern appellations. The fol- 
lowing table will render these identifications still more clear by 
presenting them in one view. 



ANCIENT NAMES. 


MODERN NAMES. 


1. Kadesh. 


El-Khalesah. 


2. Beerotb (the wells) of the Beney 


Birein (the wells). 


Ya'akin. 




3. Moserah. 


Moseriah. 


4. The station at which Korah's rebel- 


Wady el-Koreyah. 


lion occurred. 




5. Gudhgodhah. 


Gudhaghidh. 


6. Yotbah (the good water). 


'Adhbah (the good water). 


7. The Pass (in Hebrew 'Abronah). 


The Pass (in Arabic Nukb). 


8. Etzyon-geber. 


'Esyoun. 



Such is the list of stations in which every name identified 
confirms the identity of all the others. One case of apparent 
identity might merely be the effect of chance ; but when several 
such cases occur, each in its proper place relatively to the others, 
the evidence increases in weight with each successive coincidence, 
and when they amount to as many as are accumulated in the 
preceding table, the spirit of idle cavilling may attack their tes- 
timony, as it would attack the Bible itself, but it will attack 
it in vain. The general accuracy of the route being once esta- 
blished, it is certain that Kadesh must have been to the north of 
Birein, and as the average distance between the stations is about 
twenty miles, we should seek for Kadesh at this distance from 

E 



50 A Critical Enquiry into the 

Birein. This will lead us to the site of El-Khalesah. From 
this invaluable list we also derive the certainty that there is an 
omission in the list of stations in Numb, xxxiii 30; and that 
Kadesh ought to be inserted between Chasmonah and Moseroth. 
IV. The journey from Kadesh to Etzyon-geber, it will be 
recollected, was the commencement of the thirty-eight years' 
penal wandering in the desert ; and this brings us to ver. 35 in 
the list of stations in Numb, xxxiii. But the next station in 
ver. 36 is Kadesh again. This is the last visit to the city of 
Kadesh at the expiration of the thirty-eight years. The first 
visit to it is omitted from its proper place, either by accident or 
rabbinical fraud to cover a rabbinical imposture ; and now, 
having arrived at Etzyon-geber, at the commencement of the 
penal journeyings, we have a sudden leap back to Kadesh, with- 
out a single station of the thirty-eight years being particularized 
further than those from Kadesh to Etzyon-geber. This journey 
could scarcely have occupied a month, so that the best part of 
the thirty-eight years appears a mere blank in the list of the 
stations. How are we to account for the omission ? Have all 
the stations for thirty-seven years and upwards been really 
neglected by Moses,, or omitted by the copyists of the Hebrew 
Pentateuch? We think not ; it appears to us that all the prin- 
cipal stations, from the time when Israel quitted Rameses to 
their crossing the Arnon, are really included in the list of 
Numb, xxxiii. We are of opinion that the whole of the thirty- 
eight years' penal wandering was spent in continual gyrations 
round the border of Edom on the side of Amalek, and between 
the two cities of Kadesh and Etzyon-geber. The list, therefore, 
of the stations between these two cities is really the list of the 
thirty-eight years' wandering. This we infer from the com- 
mencement of the second chapter of Deuteronomy : "Then we 
turned," [from Kadesh, at the commencement of the first en- 
campment near that city,] "and took our journey into the 
wilderness on the way to the Red Sea" [i.e., the Gulf of Eylath] 
" as Jehovah spake unto me " [referring to the Divine com- 
mand, Numb. xiv. 25]. "And we compassed Mount Se'yr 
many days." [Many days is a Hebraism, which may include 
any indefinite number of years. In one instance, it is used to 
describe a period of more than four centuries.] "And Jehovah 
spake unto me, saying, Ye have compassed this mountain long 
enough : turn you northward." This was the final command to 
turn from Kadesh (on the last visit to that city) to the banks of 
the Arnon, and from thence to the east of the Jordan. The 
expression northward refers to the whole bearing of the route 
to be adopted j the first journeying of the people was necessarily 



Route of the Exodus. 51 

southward. The Hebrew original of the words, " and we com- 
passed/' is 2D3i. The verb iid signifies here to march round, to 
make the circuit of. The Israelites continually revolved round 
the borders of Edom ; not the whole of the border, for that was 
impossible, unless they had entered Canaan and Moab ; but that 
part which lay between the two cities of Etzyon-geber and 
Kadesh. 

We can easily comprehend the reasons for these continued 
marches and countermarches. 1. The Israelites were kept con- 
tinually in view of the Promised Land, which they probably 
approached at least once every year of the thirty-eight. 2. The 
Canaanites, observing them constantly occupied in journeys, ap- 
parently of a pastoral description, like the other Nomade nations, 
would gradually lose the fear which their first approach had pro- 
bably excited, and neglect to combine, as, politically speaking, 
they would have been justified in doing, for the purpose of 
attacking them at advantage in the desert. 3. The route which 
they traversed was one especially frequented by caravans, from 
which they could procure, not only the spices and other articles 
which they needed for the observance of the ceremonial law, but 
also the admirably tempered arms of India, which the Cushite 
caravans brought to Canaan and the Phoenician cities on the 
coast. At the same time they could dispose to advantage of 
their spare cattle to the merchants of these caravans. In addi- 
tion to these points, the fact that the thirty-eight years were 
spent in continual marches between Kadesh and Etzyon-geber, 
seems proved incontrovertibly by one most important argument. 
Unless we assume this to have been the case, the object of the 
last march to Kadesh is incomprehensible ; take this for granted, 
and, like all the rest of the courses of the Exodus, it is plain 
and intelligible. 

Suppose, according to the vulgar view of the matter, that 
the thirty-eight years were spent in wandering to and fro, in 
every direction, in the desert of the Tih, — at the end of this 
period Moses marches a second time to Kadesh. We may natu- 
rally enquire, W x hy? It would be replied, To invade the Ca- 
naanites. Why then was this great object not carried into 
effect ? On more mature consideration, it is replied, Moses 
deemed the attack on this side impracticable ? Dean Milman* 
explains the reason for this change of plan : " Many formidable 
difficulties opposed their penetrating into Canaan on this fron- 
tier. The country was mountainous, the hills crowned with 
strong forts, which, like Jerusalem, then Jebus, long defied their 

" History of the Jews, vol. i., p. 147. 



52 A Critical Enquiry into the 

arms, and were not finally subdued till the reign of David. It 
was not the most fruitful or inviting district of the land ; part 
of it was the wild region where David afterwards maintained 
himself with his freebooting companions, when persecuted by 
Saul. The gigantic clan about Hebron would be almost the 
first to oppose them, and the Philistines, who occupied the 
coast, the most warlike of the tribes, might fall on their rear. 
They determined, therefore, to make a circuit ; to pass round 
the Dead Sea, and, crossing the Jordan, proceed at once into 
the heart of the richest and least defensible part of the land." 

But we may be permitted with deference to observe, that 
Moses, on his first visit to Kadesh, must have been acquainted 
with all these circumstances from the faithful report of Joshua 
and Caleb; and that, during the thirty-eight years' journeyings, 
he had had ample time to weigh the difficulties and mature his 
plan of operations. On his last visit, he discovered not a single 
circumstance with which he must not have been familiar in the 
first. We should therefore form a very humble opinion of his 
abilities, supposing these matters really to have been regulated 
by the prophet himself, as Dean Milman, following Bishop War- 
burton and other writers, assumes, if we could imagine that, 
after all the knowledge acquired from the first report of the 
spies, Moses could have again led the people to Kadesh, to dis- 
hearten them by a second retreat from the Promised Land, at 
the very moment when the second generation was prepared to 
cross the inimical border. Nor would the reasons alleged by the 
Dean have been of much validity, or have increased our opinion 
of the wisdom of Moses. The difficulties on the east of the 
Dead Sea and Jordan were far greater than those on the west. 
Instead of a number of disunited kings of petty cities, two 
powerful monarchs were ready, on the east of the Jordan, to 
await their attack. The territories between the Arnon and the 
Jabbok were ruled by a warlike sovereign, inured to victory, 
and the leader of a formidable army ; and the kingdom of Bashan 
was apparently still wealthier, stronger, and more formidable. 
These two kingdoms, like the hilly region on the west of the 
Dead Sea, were inhabited by the Amorite race. They had also 
their giants (of whom king Og was a formidable specimen), and 
their country was hilly, like that of the kindred tribes on the 
north of Edom. As to the strong fortresses on the west of the 
Dead Sea, they could scarcely have been more formidable than 
the sixty cities of king Og, in Argob, fenced with high walls, 
gates and bars. With respect to the fertility of the land, the 
Amorite Highlands in the west of the Salt Sea must have been 
fertile enough, since the powerful tribe of Judah was perfectly 



Route of the Exodus. 53 

content with this province as its allotment, and it appears in 
fact to have been peculiarly rich in vineyards and olive grounds. 
After all, if they were to conquer the whole country, the greater 
or lesser fertility of the dictrict which became the first point of 
attack was of very little importance. 

But the whole argument appears to proceed upon a false 
supposition. If we give credit to Moses himself, as we must 
and ought to do, he had no more influence over the direction of 
the march which was adopted, than the meanest hewer of wood 
or drawer of water in the camp. Jehovah himself led the van 
of the army of Israel ; He was the guide and conductor of the 
march, — 

" Principiuin, rector, dux, seraita, terminus idem," 

In the most positive, the most peremptory, the most unmis- 
takeable terms, Moses assures us that not even any deputed angel, 
but the Deity himself, was the continual companion of their way, 
— the director of their march (Exod. xxxiii. 2, 3, 14, 15; and 
Deut. i. 32, 33). This statement is repeated in 2 Sam. vi. 7, 
and again by Isaiah in the lines which are thus translated by 
Lowth (Isa. lxiii. 9) : — 

" It was not an envoy, nor an angel of his presence that saved them ; 
Through his love and his indulgence, he himself redeemed them ; 
And he took them up, and he bare them, all the days of old. 

[Compare Deut. i. 31.] 
But they rebelled, and grieved his Holy Spirit, 
So that he became their enemy, and fought against them." 

It is true that Milton, not one of the most orthodox of 
divines, forgetting the scorn with which he himself, on a re- 
motely analogous question, repudiates " the common gloss of 
theologians," endeavours to throw a different colouring on these 
great passages of sacred history. 

" Such wondrous power God to his saint will lend ; 
Though present in his angel, who shall go 
Before them in a cloud, and pillar of fire, 
By day a cloud, by night a pillar of fire, 
To guide them in their journey, and remove 
Behind them, while the obdurate king pursues. " — 

Paradise Lost, book xii. 200 — 205. 
And again, 

" At length they came 
Conducted by his angel, to the land 
Promised to Abraham and his seed." — Ibid., 258 — 260. 

It is true Moses (Exod. xiv. 19) speaks of the " angel of the 



54 A Critical Enquiry into the 

Lord;" but this is an expression here and elsewhere used for 
Jehovah himself. In Exod. xxxiii. the question is expressly 
raised, whether Jehovah should accompany them himself, or 
send his angel before them. When the people heard " the evil 
tidings," that, as a punishment for their idolatry at Horeb, a 
deputed angel and not the Deity himself should accompany 
them for the rest of the march, they mourned, and stripped 
themselves of their ornaments. At the earnest supplication of 
Moses, the assurance was given that Jehovah himself would 
continue to accompany them, as he had previously done ; upon 
which Moses passionately exclaimed, " If thy presence go not 
with us, carry us not up hence." The people of that age be- 
lieved that no expedition could be safely undertaken by any 
nation except under the guidance, and protected by the pre- 
sence, of its guardian deity. Hence it was that the Israelites 
considered as "evil tidings" the announcement that an angel 
should accompany them, but that Jehovah himself would not 
" go up in the midst of them." On this fact the words of Isaiah 
are a comment, and it is impossible to desire one more clear 
and express. The difficulty which has puzzled theologians of 
the Miltonic school, and induced them to have recourse to the 
" glosses " at which Milton himself laughs, is, in truth, no diffi- 
culty at all. We may believe, as we have reason, that the Spirit 
of God pervades the whole universe ; but this is not irreconcil- 
able with the fact that a special and peculiar emanation of the 
Divine Spirit, in its absolute, perfect, and omnipotent divinity, 
and totally distinct from and unconnected with, the spirit of any 
angel or created being, really accompanied the chosen people for 
forty years in their journeyings. 

But it may be objected, that if we look on God himself as 
the leader of the journeyings of Israel, a new difficulty arises 
with respect to the march against the south of Canaan. Could 
the Deity (we propose the objection as a sceptic would make it), 
have led the chosen people against the Amorite land, with the 
avowed intention of invading Canaan from its southern border; 
and could he have afterwards found himself compelled to desist 
from his enterprise, lead them back into the desert, and await 
the growing up of a new generation of more formidable warriors ? 
Certainly not. This objection, it will be observed, is equally 
applicable, whether we suppose God, in his own person, to have 
conducted the Israelites, or as present in his angel ; but in either 
case it is equally invalid. From the first it never formed part of 
the scheme of Providence that the invasion of Canaan should 
commence from the southern border. The rebellion of Kadesh 
was foreseen by the prescient mind which directed them, and 



Route of the Exodus. 55 

also its utility in reconciling the people to the long and dreary 
wanderings in the desert, from the consciousness that these wan- 
derings were the natural result of their own act, when they ab- 
solutely refused at Kadesh to proceed in the work of conquest. 
Then, assuming that all the penal journeyings in the desert were 
mere gyrations between Kadesh and Etzyon-geber, they would 
have visited Kadesh, in all probability, not one time only, but 
repeatedly, in the course of the thirty-eight years. On the last 
visit it occurred, as it would appear to the Israelites, accidentally, 
that the last male of the condemned generation died at Kadesh. 
This was the signal for the march to conquest. But the people 
had long before, as we may presume, been informed that the in- 
vasion of Canaan was now to be made from the east of the 
Jordan. This was a matter of little importance, if Edom and 
Moab would permit them to march through their territories. 
The application for permission was made to both, and they both 
refused (Numb. xx. 14 — 21 ; Judg. xi. 16 — 18). 

The Israelites then found themselves at the very furthest 
point from the banks of the Arnon, which they had reached 
in their marches for thirty-eight years. The effect of this could 
not have been to discourage them ; but to make them more 
eager for the approaching conquest. The dangers of their future 
battles with the Canaanites appeared trivial to the second race 
of the desert-bred, in comparison with the tediousness of their 
journeyings, and the privations of the road. With what eager 
courage they proceeded to the task of conquest after this hard 
training, is evident from the rapidity with which they conquered 
two great nations, routed large armies led by gigantic warriors 
and monarchs accustomed to victory, stormed their fortified 
cities, and extirpated the whole race of the Oriental Amorites — 
a people, according to the prophet, " tall as the cedar, strong as 
the oak." We think, therefore, that our view of the thirty- 
eight years' wandering is that which best accords with the Mosaic 
history, and the principles of construction most consonant with 
the teaching of orthodox Christianity. 



Chap. VI. — Mount Hot and the final march to the Arnon. 

In the thirty-eighth year after the children of Israel had 
quitted Rameses, they visited Kadesh for the last time. On this 
visit, they encamped on the east of the city in the desert of Tzin. 
This desert was apparently less agreeable than that of Paran, 
and the people were exceedingly dissatisfied with the site of 
their encampment. " Wherefore " (they exclaim to Moses) 



56 A Critical Enquiry into the 

" have ye made us to come up out of Egypt into this evil place ? 
It is no place of seed, or of figs, or vines, or of pomegranates, 
neither is there any water to drink " (Numb. xx. 5) . The want 
of water was again remedied by a miracle. There was a rock 
near the camp, as in the southern station of Rephidim, from 
whence Moses drew an abundant supply of water by striking it 
with his rod. The same name of Meribah was given to this 
miraculous spring as to that on the south of Horeb ; but to dis- 
tinguish between the two, the northern spring was called 
Meribah-Kadesh. Here Miriam died and was buried; and here 
died the last of the doomed race of the emancipated slaves of 
Pharaoh. This was the signal for their march to the Arnon ; 
and Moses now received the Divine command to prepare for the 
last of the journeys of Israel. 

There was a well-known and frequented road from Kadesh to 
Moab, called the Derek ham-Melek, or royal road, the same 
possibly as the Roman road from Elusa to Moab, through the 
city of Thamaro, the Tamar of Ezekiel. To obtain permission 
to pass by this road, the Israelites despatched ambassadors to 
the king of Edom ; their request was peremptorily denied, and, 
according to the rules of human policy, the refusal was certainly 
a prudent one, and such as became the king of the wisest nation 
in the East. "Ye shall not pass through my land," said the 
king, " lest I come out against you with the sword." The re- 
newed importunities of the ambassadors produced a new refusal ; 
and the only result of the embassy was, that the king of Edom 
came out to protect his frontier with a large army, or, as the 
sacred historian expresses it, " with much people and a strong 
hand." The Israelites of the second generation, a very different 
people from their fathers, would have attempted to force their 
passage with the edge of the sword (2 Chron. xx. 10), an at- 
tempt which, in all probability, if they had been left to their 
own human resources, would have ended in the destruction of 
their nation, so great is the natural strength of the fastnesses 
of Edom. 

From this outrageous violation of all the laws of nations, 
they were diverted by the express command of God, which en- 
joined them, in the most peremptory terms, to respect the 
boundary of the kindred people. " Ye are to pass by the borders 
of your brethren, the children of Esau, which dwell in Se'yr, 
and they shall be afraid of you;" [that is, they shall suspect you 
of the intention of invading and conquering their country; for 
as to any fear on the part of Edom, it is quite evident there 
was none], "take good heed, therefore, that you meddle not 
with them, for I will not permit you to plant even the tread of 



Route of the Exodus. 57 

the sole of your feet on their land, for I have given Mount 
Se'yr unto Edom for a possession." In spite of this some 
modern writers make the Israelites encamp in the capital city of 
Edom, and bury their high priest within view of the rocks over 
the city. Such is the result, even in the nineteenth century 
after Christ, of the audacious imposture of the Jewish doctors 
of the traditional law ! As long as this extravagant illusion 
maintains its influence, any rational account of the geography 
of the Exodus is perfectly impossible. Fortunately, after the 
proofs already given of the true route from Kadesh to Etzyon- 
geber, it is not likely that the old rabbinical imposture will 
have many adherents. 

The boundaries of Edom extended as far south in the East- 
ern Mount Se'yr, as the northern side of a ravine called the 
Wady Ithm, not far from the cities of Eylath and Etzyon-geber. 
Once more, therefore, the children of Israel were compelled to 
retrace the old route, for the purpose of making a long detour 
by the south of Edom. When they arrived at Moserah, the 
second station, which we have identified with the Wady Mose- 
riah, the divine command was announced to Aaron, that " he 
should be gathered to his people." In the immediate view of 
this encampment was the true Mount Hor, that mountain which 
Se'yr and his family had so called from the Mount Hor in Le- 
banon. It is a lofty, conical mountain, visible, at the distance 
of three days' journey, to the travellers who are going from 
Alcaba to Hebron and Gaza. It stands at the very corner of 
the land of Edom, at the south-west angle of the Western 
Mount Se'yr, and answers exactly to the scriptural descriptions, 
DVw-y™ krt, on the boundary of the land of Edom, Numb. xx. 
23; and ni-rx ynst n^a, at the edge of the land of Edom, Numb, 
xxxiii. 37. 

Moses, Aaron, and Eliezer ascended Mount Hor, in the sight 
of all the congregation. The high priest was stripped of his 
sacerdotal garments, which were put on Eliezer his son; and 
Aaron died there on the top of the mountain. The encamp- 
ment, from which the Israelites witnessed this scene, was in the 
territories of Amalek, not of Edom. Not a single Israelite set 
foot on a single clod of Edomite earth, except Moses, Aaron, 
and Eliezer, who were specially excepted from the general in- 
terdiction. 

The modern name of Mount Hor, as we have before ob- 
served, is the Jebel Araif en-Nakah. The Wady Moseriah is 
within a few miles of its base ; and, in Deut. x. 6, we are told 
that at Moserah Aaron died and was buried. When we examine 
the irresistible evidence in favour of the genuine Mount Hor, it 

F 



58 A Critical Enquiry into the 

is difficult to avoid smiling at the rapture and enthusiasm which 
so many travellers have wasted on the Jebel Haroun, a moun- 
tain which could not, by any possibility, have been the Mount 
Hor of Moses, and whose adoption as such, if pursued through 
all its consequences, would be almost tantamount to a surrender 
of the Mosaic verity to the attacks of scepticism. 

The remaining stations as far as Etzyon-geber, we have 
already particularized. 

The crossing of the Wady Arabah from west to east, a little 
to the north of Etzyon-geber, and the passage through the 
Wady Ithm, are thus described by Moses : " And we passed 
away from our brethren the children of Esau, who dwelt in 
Se'yr, by the way of the 'Arabah near Eylath and near Etzyon- 
geber. Then we turned, and passed [northward] on the way to 
the wilderness of Moab." 

After passing the defile of the Wady Ithm, the Israelites 
were on the east of the territories of Edom, and their way was 
now northward to the territories of Moab. The stations from 
hence to the Arnon were : — 1. Tzalmonah ; 2. Punon ; 3. Oboth ; 
4. 'Iyey-'Abarim ; and 5. The nachal (or brook) of Zered. The 
kingdom of Moab was, at this time, exceedingly small, cer- 
tainly not exceeding fifty miles in length, by about twenty-five 
in breadth. Its northern boundary was the Arnon, the modern 
Wady el-Mojib ; and we may suspect it extended at least as far 
south as El-Busaireh, which appears to be the Botzrah of Moab. 

A considerable territory to the north of the Arnon had be- 
longed to Moab, in the memory of people living at the time 
of the Exodus. This had been conquered by Sihon king of 
Heshbon, whose dominions now extended from the Arnon to 
the Jabbok. But the territory thus wrested from the kingdom 
of Moab still retained its ancient name of Moab ; and thus, 
when the Israelites were encamped on the east of the Jordan, 
they were said to be ntfra rhym, in the plains of Moab, Numb. 
xxi. 1. This point is particularly deserving of attention. 

Notwithstanding the diminution of its territory, Moab was 
still wealthy, populous, and warlike. Moses, after his invariable 
custom, sent ambassadors to the king of Moab, to ask his 
permission to pass through his land. This permission was re- 
fused by the king, as we learn from Jephthah, who could not be 
mistaken on a point so important. " Then they compassed the 
land of Moab, and came by the east side of the land of Moab, 
and pitched on the other side of the Arnon, but came not within 
the border of Moab; for Arnon was the border of Moab" 
(Judges xi. 18). Nothing can be more clear and positive than 
this. It agrees exactly with the Mosaic narrative, which de- 



Route of the Exodus. 59 

scribes the Israelites as encamping in the wilderness of Kede- 
moth, and sending ambassadors from thence to Sihon king of 
Heshbon. The wilderness of Kedemoth was that occupied by 
the Kedemah Ishmaelites. The kindred tribes of Jetur and 
Naphish were located to the east of the Ammonite territory, 
1 Chron. v. 19. 

Notwithstanding these clear indications to the contrary, 
Dean Milman and Dr. Kitto describe the Israelites as passing 
through the kingdom of Moab. "The Israelites/' says the 
Dean, "passed without opposition through the district of Moab, 
till they reached that stream [the Arnon] now called the 
Modjeb." 5 Dr. Kitto's account of the same mythic journey is 
worth quoting : " The Moabites, on their part, offered no oppo- 
sition to the march of the Hebrews through their territory, 
though it may be suspected that it was less good will than fear 
which prevented their refusal; so the Israelites pursued their 
march to the banks of the Arnon." c The gravity with which 
Dr. Kitto suggests the reasons for granting a permission which 
was never granted, is not a little amusing. It is quite clear that 
the march of the Israelites was round the east boundary of 
Moab. The brook Zered, on which they encamped, was pro- 
bably in the wilderness of Kedemoth. It has been confounded 
with the Wady el-Ahsy, but was most likely a confluent of the 
Arnon. It is only in the western part of its course that the 
Arnon formed the boundary of Moab. The point at which the 
Israelites crossed this river was on the east of Moab ; and imme- 
diately on crossing it, they found themselves in the hostile ter- 
ritory of the king of Heshbon. Here then the work of conquest 
commenced, and here we may close our account of the Exodus. 



b History of the Jews, vol. i., p. 149. 
e History of Palestine, p. 319. 



A TABULAR VIEW OF THE STATIONS OP THE EXODUS. 


FIRST LIST. 


SECOND LIST. 


THIRD LIST. 


FOURTH LIST. 


FIFTH LIST. 


Journey from Ra- 


Journey from Mt. 


First iourney from 


Last journey from 


Journey from Et- 


meses to Mount 


Sinai to Kadesh. 


Kadesh to Et- 


Kadesh to Et- 


zyon-geber to 


Sinai. 




zyon-geber ; 


zyon-geber ; — 


the Anion; — 






and final return 


being fart of 


being the re- 






to Kadesh : — 


the final march 


maining part 






comprising the 


to Canaan. 


of the march to 






whole of the 




Canaan. 






punitory wan- 










derings of 38 










years. 






1. Ra'meses. 


1. ) The names of 
2. /these two sta- 


1. Beney Ya'akan 


1. Beeroth Beney 


1. Tzalmonah. 


2. Succotli. 


[used ellipti- 


Ya'akan [or, 


2. Punon. 


3. Etham (at the 


tions are not 


cally for Beer- 


The wells of 


3. Oboth. 


edge of the De- 


mentioned. See 


oth Beney Ya'- 


the sons of 


4. 'Iyey 'Abarim. 


sert of Etham ; 


Numb. x. 33. 


akan. In Num. 


Ya'akan]. 


5. Nachal Zered. 


or Shur.) 


3. Tab'erah, or 


xxxiii. 31, this 


2. Moserah. 


[On quitting this 


4. Between Mig- 


Kibroth hat- 


station is, by 


(" There Aaron 


station they crossed 


dol and the 


Ta'awah. 


the mistake of 


died, and there he 


the Arnon, and en- 


Gulf of Shur, 


4. Chatzeroth. 


the copyists, 


was buried," Deut. 


tered transjordanic 


withBa'alTze- 


5. Rithmah. 


transposed 


x.6. Moserah there- 


Canaan.] 


phon on the 


6. Rimmon-paretz 


from its proper 


fore must have been 




north and Pi- 


7. Libnah. 


place, and in- 


the nearest station 




ha-chiroth on 


8. Rissah. 


serted after 


to Mount Hor. 




the south. 


9. Kehelah. 


Moseroth]. 


3. Hag-Gudhgod- 




[Passage of the 
Red Sea.] 


10. Har Shapher. 


2. Moseroth. 


hah. 




11. Charadah. 


3. Chorhag-Gidh- 


4. Yotbathah. 




5. Encampment 


12. Makheloth. 


gadh. 


5. ) Ebronah. 

6. j Etzyon-geber. 




on the Ama- 


13. Tachath. 


4. Yotbathah. 




lekite side of 


14. Tarach. 


5. 'Ebronah. 


Omitted in the 




the Gulf. 


15. Mithkah. 


6. Etzyon-geber. 


list in Deut. x. 




6. ) Two stations 

7. j unnamed in 


16. Chashmonah. 


[The preceding 


' [It is not certain 




17. Kadesh, on the 


j ourney formed part 


that on this journey 




the Desert of 


west side of the 


of the 38 years' pe- 


they actually en- 




Shur,orEtham, 


city, in the De- 


nal wandering in 


camped at Etzyon- 




in which there 


sert of Paran. 


the desert. In pp. 


geber: they crossed 




was no water. 




50 — 55, we have en- 


the Arabah from 




8. Marah (where 
the water was 




deavoured to shew 


west to east, a little 






that the remainder 


to the north of Et- 




hitter). 




of the wanderings 


zyon-geber and Ey- 




9. Eylim (where 
there were 12 




of these 38 years 


lath, passed thro' 




' 


consisted of repeat- 


the Wady Ithm, 




fountains and 




ed gyrations round 


and then entered 




60 palm-trees). 
10. Encampment 




the west and south- 


the great Desert of 






west borders of E- 


Arabia. The re- 




on the shore of 




dorn, between the 


maining stations 




the Gulf. 




two cities of Ka- 


(in the next list) 




11. The Desert of 




desh and Etzyon- 


are in the Arabian 




Sin. 




geber, and along the 


Desert, to the east 




12. Dophkah. 




same line of sta- 


of Edom and Moab.] 




13. Alush. 




tions as the above. 






14. Rep hi dim (at 




In the course of 






the foot of Mt. 




these gyrations, 






Horeb). 




just at the expira- 






15. The Desert of 




tion of the 38 years, 






Sinai, in front 




the Israelites found 






of that moun- 




themselves at the 






tain. 




city from whence 
their wanderings 
had commenced.] 
7. Kadesh, on the 
east side of the 
city, in the De- 
sert of Tain. 






Authorities. 


Authorities. 


Authorities. 


Authorities. 


Authorities. 


Numb, xxxiii. 


Numb, xxxiii. 


Numb, xxxiii. 


Deut. x. 6 and 7. 


Numb, xxxiii. 


5 — 15, compared 
with the historical 


16 — 29, compared 


30—36, compared 


The paragraph, 


41 — 44, compared 


with the four his- 


with the historical 


Numb, xxxiii. 37 — 


with the historical 


chapters, Exodus 
xiii., xiv., xv., xvi., 


torical chapters, 


chapter, Numb. xiv. ' 


40, also relates to 


chapter, Numb. xxi. 


Numb, x., xi., xii., 


25. 


the same journey; 


10—13. 


xvii., xix. 


and xiii. 

For the proofs 
that the name of 
Kadesh is omitted 
in its proper place, 
Numb, xxxiii. 30, 
sec the accompany- 
ing Essay, p. 38. 




but the only station 
particularized, in 
the last cited para- 
graph, is Mount 
Hor. All the other 
stations are omit- 
ted. That both the 
two passages cited 
above refer to the 
same journey, is 
evident from their 
both mentioning 
the death of Aaron, 
which occurred on 
this journey. See 






i 




also the historical 
chapters, Numbers 
xx. 22—29, and xxi. 
1-4. 





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